Do this as a list comprehension?

[Terry Reedy]

"Mensanator" <mensanator at aol.com> wrote in message 
news:c55356a4-04a0-442e-ad84-f35156cdec9c at z72g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
On Jun 6, 1:44 am, "Terry Reedy" <tjre... at udel.edu> wrote:
> "Mensanator" <mensana... at aol.com> wrote in message
>
> news:bbd90051-36be-4378-9a27-2a47a5471d12 at a1g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
> | On Jun 5, 10:42?pm, John Salerno <johnj... at gmailNOSPAM.com> wrote:
> | > Is it possible to write a list comprehension for this so as to 
> produce
> a
> | > list of two-item tuples?
> | >
> | > base_scores = range(8, 19)
> | > score_costs = [0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3]
> | > print zip(base_scores, score_costs)
> | >
> | > I can't think of how the structure of the list comprehension would 
> work
> | > in this case, because it seems to require iteration over two separate
> | > sequences to produce each item in the tuple.
>
> Which is exactly the purpose of zip, or its specialization enumerate!

Aren't you overlooking the fact that zip() truncates the output
to the shorter length iterable?
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<message does not quote correctly>
<me> No.
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And since the OP foolishly
hardcoded his range bounds, zip(base_scores,score_cost) will
silently return the wrong answer if the base_count list grows.
============
<me> So, to future proof his code he should better use 
zip(itertools.count(8), score_costs).  I consider this better than using 
enumerate to make the wrong pairing (with itertools.count(0)) and then 
correcting the mistake.
====================
Surely enumerate() wasn't added to Python with no intention of
ever being used.
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<me> Of course not, so why suggest that is was?
However, it was intended for the most common case when one wants to pair 
items with counts beginning with 0.
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> Of course, enumerate(iterable) is just a facade over 
> zip(itertools.count(),
> iterable)

But if all I'm using itertools for is the count() function, why would
I go to the trouble of importing it when I can simply use enumerate()?
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<me>I have no idea.  The purpose of enumerate is to be easy.
But it is not so easy when it gives the wrong pairings.
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Is it a couple orders of magnitude faster?
=================================
<me> Perhaps you do not understand 'facade' - the front part or face of 
something that you see.  I was saying that enumerate is a face on a room 
containing zip and itertools.count, or the equivalent code thereof. 
Therefore, enumerate is an easy way to do a particular zip, not an 
alternative to zip.  And there should be no significant performance 
difference, certainly for long sequences which make the additional lookups 
irrelevant.

tjr