How to sum columns of an array in Python

Question

How do I add up all of the values of a column in a python array? Ideally I want to do this without importing any additional libraries.

input_val = [[1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
             [1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
             [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]]

output_val = [3, 6, 9, 12, 15]

I know I this can be done in a nested for loop, wondering if there was a better way (like a list comprehension)?

Answer 1

zip and sum can get that done:

Code:

[sum(x) for x in zip(*input_val)]

zip takes the contents of the input list and transposes them so that each element of the contained lists is produced at the same time. This allows the sum to see the first elements of each contained list, then next iteration will get the second element of each list, etc...

Test Code:

input_val = [[1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
             [1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
             [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]]

print([sum(x) for x in zip(*input_val)])

Results:

[3, 6, 9, 12, 15]