accessing elements in multi-dimensional sequences

[Duncan Booth]

anton at vredegoor.doge.nl (Anton Vredegoor) wrote in 
news:40b72a41$0$128$3a628fcd at reader3.nntp.hccnet.nl:

> d =  ['0891931243\n', '0325443777\n', '0933477028\n',
> '0699624617\n', '0922210996\n']
> 
> #swap rows and columns, with the side effect of turning
> #strings into lists, strings must be of equal length or
> #else some information will be lost:
> 
> d1 = zip(*d)
> 
> #remove a row (corresponds to a *column* in the old view)
> #this is an elementary operation now:
> 
> del d1[-1]
> 
> #swapping again restores the old row and column view:
> 
> d1 = zip(*d1)
> 
> #join the elements of the sublists in order to produce strings:
> 
> d1 = map(''.join,d1)
> 
> print d1
> 
> #output is:
> #['0891931243', '0325443777', '0933477028', '0699624617',
> #'0922210996']

This, of course, only works when the strings are all exactly the same 
length. If they are different lengths it truncates all the strings to the 
length of the shortest.