Modifying every alternate element of a sequence

[Tim Chase]

> I have a list of numbers and I want to build another list with every
> second element multiplied by -1.
> 
> input = [1,2,3,4,5,6]
> wanted = [1,-2,3,-4,5,-6]
> 
> I can implement it like this:
> 
> input = range(3,12)
> wanted = []
> for (i,v) in enumerate(input):
>     if i%2 == 0:
>         wanted.append(v)
>     else:
>         wanted.append(-v)

 >>> input = range(3,12)
 >>> [i%2==0 and v or -v for (i,v) in enumerate(input)]
[3, -4, 5, -6, 7, -8, 9, -10, 11]

 > But is there any other better way to do this.

I'm not sure densely packing it into a list comprehension is 
necessarily a *better* way, just a more compact way.

To make more sense of it, you might create a helper function that 
does your comparison work:

	def inv_if(v, test):
		if test:
			return v
		else:
			return -v

	[inv_if(v, i%2==0) for (i,v) in enumerate(input)]


Or you could even do something like

	def inv_alternating(t):
		i, v = t
		if i%2==0:
			return v
		else:
			return -v

	[inv_alternating(t) for t in enumerate(input)]

Either compacts it for the actual call within a list 
comprehension, but it is cleaner to read what's going on.

-tkc