Slice a list of lists?

[Benjamin Kaplan]

On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Jonno <jonnojohnson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 3:18 PM, Jonno <jonnojohnson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 3:06 PM, Jonno <jonnojohnson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 2:11 PM, Benjamin Kaplan
>>> <benjamin.kaplan at case.edu> wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 2:55 PM, Jonno <jonnojohnson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> I know that I can index into a list of lists like this:
>>>>> a=[[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9]]
>>>>> a[0][2]=3
>>>>> a[2][0]=7
>>>>>
>>>>> but when I try to use fancy indexing to select the first item in each
>>>>> list I get:
>>>>> a[0][:]=[1,2,3]
>>>>> a[:][0]=[1,2,3]
>>>>>
>>>>> Why is this and is there a way to select [1,4,7]?
>>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> It's not fancy indexing. It's called taking a slice of the existing
>>>> list. Look at it this way
>>>> a[0] means take the first element of a. The first element of a is [1,2,3]
>>>> a[0][:] means take all the elements in that first element of a. All
>>>> the elements of [1,2,3] are [1,2,3].
>>>>
>>>> a[:] means take all the elements of a. So a[:] is [[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9]].
>>>> a[:][0] means take the first element of all the elements of a. The
>>>> first element of a[:] is [1,2,3].
>>>>
>>>> There is no simple way to get [1,4,7] because it is just a list of
>>>> lists and not an actual matrix. You have to extract the elements
>>>> yourself.
>>>>
>>>> col = []
>>>> for row in a:
>>>>    col.append(row[0])
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> You can do this in one line using a list comprehension:
>>>> [ row[0] for row in a ]
>>>>
>>> Thanks! (to Andreas too). Totally makes sense now.
>>>
>>
>> Now if I want to select the first item in every 2nd item of list a
>> (ie: [1,7]) can I use ::2 anywhere or do I need to create a list of
>> indices to use in a more complex for loop?
>>
> Seems like the simplest way would be:
> [row[0] for row in a][::2]

Yes. You could either do that, or do
[row[0] for row in a[::2]]. It doesn't make that much of a difference,
unless memory is really tight (doing the ::2 first means your list is
smaller to begin with)

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