zip the values from a dictionary [duplicate]

Question

I have a dictionary in python 2.7 that has the following structure:

x = {
     '1': ['a', 'b', 'c'],
     '2': ['d', 'e', 'f']
    }

The length of the value list is always the same and I would like to basically zip the value lists with corresponding values. So, in this case it will create three new lists as:

[['a', 'd'], ['b', 'e'], ['c', 'f']]

I know I can write an awful looking loop to do this but I was wondering if there is a more pythonic way to do this. I need to preserve the order.

Answer 1

You can do the following:

zip(*x.values())

Explanation:

• x.values() returns [['a', 'b', 'c'], ['d', 'e', 'f']] (order may change so you might need to sort x first.)
• zip([a, b], [c, d]) returns [[a, c], [b, d]]
• To expand x.values() into arguments to zip, prepend * to it.