Complex discussions of "simple" problems (was: Loop in a loop?)

[Paul Rubin]

Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam at benfinney.id.au> writes:
> Enjoyment of the discussion, after all, is the main reward most people
> can ever hope to get for participation in most threads here.

Well then, in that case, what the heck.

from itertools import *
def padzip(*xs, **kw):
    pad = kw.get('padding', None)
    ts = izip(*[chain(((y,) for y in x), repeat(None)) for x in xs])
    def m(t): return tuple((x[0] if x else pad) for x in t)
    return imap(m, takewhile(any, ts))