4.5 Using zip() to structure and flatten sequences

The zip() function interleaves values from several iterators or sequences. It will create n tuples from the values in each of the n input iterables or sequences. We used it in the previous section to interleave data points from two sets of samples, creating two-tuples.

The zip() function is a generator. It does not materialize a resulting collection.

The following is an example of code that shows what the zip() function does:

>>> xi = [1.47, 1.50, 1.52, 1.55, 1.57, 1.60, 1.63, 1.65, 
... 1.68, 1.70, 1.73, 1.75, 1.78, 1.80, 1.83,] 
>>> yi = [52.21, 53.12, 54.48, 55.84, 57.20, 58.57, 59.93, 61.29, 
... 63.11, 64.47, 66.28, 68.10, 69.92, 72.19, 74.46,] 
 
>>> zip(xi, yi) 
<zip object at ...> 
 
>>> pairs = list(zip(xi, yi)) 
>>> pairs[:3] 
[(1.47, 52.21), (1.5, 53.12), (1.52, 54.48)] 
>>> pairs[-3:] 
[(1.78, 69...