Better way to swap elements in a list? - python

I have a bunch of lists that look like this one:
l = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
I want to swap elements as follows:
final_l = [2, 1, 4, 3, 6, 5, 8, 7, 10, 9]
The size of the lists may vary, but they will always contain an even number of elements.
I'm fairly new to Python and am currently doing it like this:
l = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
final_l = []
for i in range(0, len(l)/2):
final_l.append(l[2*i+1])
final_l.append(l[2*i])
I know this isn't really Pythonic and would like to use something more efficient. Maybe a list comprehension?

No need for complicated logic, simply rearrange the list with slicing and step:
In [1]: l = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
In [2]: l[::2], l[1::2] = l[1::2], l[::2]
In [3]: l
Out[3]: [2, 1, 4, 3, 6, 5, 8, 7, 10, 9]
 TLDR;
Edited with explanation
I believe most viewers are already familiar with list slicing and multiple assignment. In case you don't I will try my best to explain what's going on (hope I do not make it worse).
To understand list slicing, here already has an excellent answer and explanation of list slice notation.
Simply put:
a[start:end] # items start through end-1
a[start:] # items start through the rest of the array
a[:end] # items from the beginning through end-1
a[:] # a copy of the whole array
There is also the step value, which can be used with any of the above:
a[start:end:step] # start through not past end, by step
Let's look at OP's requirements:
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] # list l
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 # respective index of the elements
l[0] l[2] l[4] l[6] l[8] # first tier : start=0, step=2
l[1] l[3] l[5] l[7] l[9] # second tier: start=1, step=2
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
l[1] l[3] l[5] l[7] l[9]
l[0] l[2] l[4] l[6] l[8] # desired output
First tier will be: l[::2] = [1, 3, 5, 7, 9]
Second tier will be: l[1::2] = [2, 4, 6, 8, 10]
As we want to re-assign first = second & second = first, we can use multiple assignment, and update the original list in place:
first , second = second , first
that is:
l[::2], l[1::2] = l[1::2], l[::2]
As a side note, to get a new list but not altering original l, we can assign a new list from l, and perform above, that is:
n = l[:] # assign n as a copy of l (without [:], n still points to l)
n[::2], n[1::2] = n[1::2], n[::2]
Hopefully I do not confuse any of you with this added explanation. If it does, please help update mine and make it better :-)

Here a single list comprehension that does the trick:
In [1]: l = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
In [2]: [l[i^1] for i in range(len(l))]
Out[2]: [2, 1, 4, 3, 6, 5, 8, 7, 10, 9]
The key to understanding it is the following demonstration of how it permutes the list indices:
In [3]: [i^1 for i in range(10)]
Out[3]: [1, 0, 3, 2, 5, 4, 7, 6, 9, 8]
The ^ is the exclusive or operator. All that i^1 does is flip the least-significant bit of i, effectively swapping 0 with 1, 2 with 3 and so on.

You can use the pairwise iteration and chaining to flatten the list:
>>> from itertools import chain
>>>
>>> list(chain(*zip(l[1::2], l[0::2])))
[2, 1, 4, 3, 6, 5, 8, 7, 10, 9]
Or, you can use the itertools.chain.from_iterable() to avoid the extra unpacking:
>>> list(chain.from_iterable(zip(l[1::2], l[0::2])))
[2, 1, 4, 3, 6, 5, 8, 7, 10, 9]

A benchmark between top answers:
Python 2.7:
('inp1 ->', 15.302665948867798) # NPE's answer
('inp2a ->', 10.626379013061523) # alecxe's answer with chain
('inp2b ->', 9.739919185638428) # alecxe's answer with chain.from_iterable
('inp3 ->', 2.6654279232025146) # Anzel's answer
Python 3.4:
inp1 -> 7.913498195000102
inp2a -> 9.680125927000518
inp2b -> 4.728151862000232
inp3 -> 3.1804273489997286
If you are curious about the different performances between python 2 and 3, here are the reasons:
As you can see #NPE's answer (inp1) performs very better in python3.4, the reason is that in python3.X range() is a smart object and doesn't preserve all the items between that range in memory like a list.
In many ways the object returned by range() behaves as if it is a list, but in fact it isn’t. It is an object which returns the successive items of the desired sequence when you iterate over it, but it doesn’t really make the list, thus saving space.
And that's why in python 3 it doesn't return a list while you slice the range object.
# python2.7
>>> range(10)[2:5]
[2, 3, 4]
# python 3.X
>>> range(10)[2:5]
range(2, 5)
The second significant change is performance accretion of the third approach (inp3). As you can see the difference between it and the last solution has decreased to ~2sec (from ~7sec). The reason is because of the zip() function which in python3.X it returns an iterator which produces the items on demand. And since the chain.from_iterable() needs to iterate over the items once again it's completely redundant to do it before that too (what that zip does in python 2).
Code:
from timeit import timeit
inp1 = """
[l[i^1] for i in range(len(l))]
"""
inp2a = """
list(chain(*zip(l[1::2], l[0::2])))
"""
inp2b = """
list(chain.from_iterable(zip(l[1::2], l[0::2])))
"""
inp3 = """
l[::2], l[1::2] = l[1::2], l[::2]
"""
lst = list(range(100000))
print('inp1 ->', timeit(stmt=inp1,
number=1000,
setup="l={}".format(lst)))
print('inp2a ->', timeit(stmt=inp2a,
number=1000,
setup="l={}; from itertools import chain".format(lst)))
print('inp2b ->', timeit(stmt=inp2b,
number=1000,
setup="l={}; from itertools import chain".format(lst)))
print('inp3 ->', timeit(stmt=inp3,
number=1000,
setup="l={}".format(lst)))

One of the possible answer using chain and list comprehension
>>> l = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
>>> list(chain([(l[2*i+1], l[2*i]) for i in range(0, len(l)/2)]))
[(2, 1), (4, 3), (6, 5), (8, 7), (10, 9)]

Another way, create nested lists with pairs reversing their order, then flatten the lists with itertools.chain.from_iterable
>>> from itertools import chain
>>> l = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
>>> list(chain.from_iterable([[l[i+1],l[i]] for i in range(0,(len(l)-1),2)]))
[2, 1, 4, 3, 6, 5, 8, 7, 10, 9]
EDIT: I just applied Kasramvd's benchmark test to my solution and I found this solution is slower than the other top answers, so I wouldn't recommend it for large lists. I still find this quite readable though if performance is not critical.

Another approach with simply re-assigning and slicing technique
l = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
for a in range(0,len(l),2):
l[a:a+2] = l[a-len(l)+1:a-1-len(l):-1]
print l
output
[2, 1, 4, 3, 6, 5, 8, 7, 10, 9]

For fun, if we interpret "swap" to mean "reverse" in a more general scope, the itertools.chain.from_iterable approach can be used for subsequences of longer lengths.
l = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
def chunk(list_, n):
return (list_[i:i+n] for i in range(0, len(list_), n))
list(chain.from_iterable(reversed(c) for c in chunk(l, 4)))
# [4, 3, 2, 1, 8, 7, 6, 5, 10, 9]

An(other) alternative:
final_l = list() # make an empty list
for i in range(len(l)): # for as many items there are in the original list
if i % 2 == 0: # if the item is even
final_l.append(l[i+1]) # make this item in the new list equal to the next in the original list
else: # else, so when the item is uneven
final_l.append(l[i-1]) # make this item in the new list equal to the previous in the original list
This assumes that the original list has an even number of items. If not, a try-except can be added:
final_l = list()
for i in range(len(l)):
if i % 2 == 0:
try: # try if we can add the next item
final_l.append(l[i+1])
except: # if we can't (because i+1 doesnt exist), add the current item
final_l.append(l[i])
else:
final_l.append(l[i-1])

A way using Numpy
import numpy as np
l = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
l = np.array(l)
final_l = list(np.flip(l.reshape(len(l)//2,2), 1).flatten())

New to stack overflow. Please free to leave a comment or feedback on this solution.
swap = [2, 1, 4, 3, 5]
lst = []
for index in range(len(swap)):
if index%2 == 0 and index < len(swap)-1:
swap[index],swap[index+1] = swap[index+1],swap[index]
lst.append(swap[index])
print(lst)
out = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

I don't see anything wrong with your implementation at all. But you could perhaps do a simple swap instead.
l = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
for i in range(0, len(l), 2):
old = l[i]
l[i] = l[i+1]
l[i+1] = old
EDIT
Apparently, Python has a nicer way to do a swap which would make the code like this
l = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
for i in range(0, len(l), 2):
l[i], l[i+1] = l[i+1], l[i]

newList = [(x[2*i+1], x[2*i]) for i in range(0, len(x)/2)]
Now find a way to unzip the tuples. I won't do all of your homework.

Here a solution based in the modulo operator:
l = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
even = []
uneven = []
for i,item in enumerate(l):
if i % 2 == 0:
even.append(item)
else:
uneven.append(item)
list(itertools.chain.from_iterable(zip(uneven, even)))

Related

Python move all elements of a list one position back with same len

def list_move_back(new_value, value_list):
for i in reversed(value_list):
if value_list.index(i) != len(value_list)-1:
value_list[value_list.index(i)+1] = i
value_list[0] = new_value
return value_list
I want to get the following result:
list_example = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
list_example = list_move_back(12, list_example]
print(list_example)
>>>[12, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
It works if I run the function two times:
list_example = list_move_back(12, list_example]
print(list_example)
>>>[12, 12, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]
but if I want to run it a third time, the result looks like that:
list_example = list_move_back(12, list_example]
print(list_example)
>>>[12, 12, 1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]
The first 1 should be a 12. I have no idea why it doesn't work.
Just use list slicing:
def list_move_back(new_value, list_of_values):
return [new_value] + list_of_values[:-1]
Explanation: list_of_values[:-1] returns all the elements except for the last. By appending it to the new value, you get the wanted result. This answer has a pretty cool explanation of how list slicing works.
Also, if for some reason you'd like the "verbose" way to do this (maybe for an exercise or whatever), here's a way to go about it:
def list_move_back(new_value, list_of_values):
for i in range(len(list_of_values)-1, 0, -1):
list_of_values[i] = list_of_values[i-1]
list_of_values[0] = new_value
return list_of_values
I'd recommend list slicing over this method 9/10 times but again, I'm just leaving this here because there might be a case where someone wants to do this as some sort of mental exercise for indexing.
If you need the list to change in place, you can use the list methods .pop() to remove the last item and .insert(0,value) to add an item to the front:
>>> L = list(range(1,11))
>>> L
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
>>> id(L)
1772071032392
>>> L.pop();L.insert(0,12)
10
>>> L
[12, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> id(L) # same list id, modified in place...
1772071032392

How can I find n smallest numbers without changing the order of the first list?

I intend to get the n smallest numbers in a list but keep the numbers in the same order they appear in the list. For example:
This is my list:
A = [1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 6, 8, 7, 2, 6, 8, 7, 0]
I like to get the first three lowest numbers as it has been ordered in the first list:
[1, 2, 0]
I do not want to sort the result as:
[0, 1, 2]
I have tried:
heapq.nsmallest(3,A)
but i wonder if it is possible to retain this list as:[1, 2, 0]
By the way, I'm not a Python coder so thanks for the help in advance.
You can try this:
new_a = []
A=[1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 6, 8, 7, 2, 6, 8, 7, 0]
for a in A:
if a not in new_a:
new_a.append(a)
new_a = [i for i in new_a if i in sorted(new_a)[:3]]
Output:
[1, 2, 0]
You could use heapq.nsmallest() to get the n smallest elements from the list. Then use collections.Counter to create a multiset from that list which you can use to check which elements from the original list to include in the result, e.g.
>>> from heapq import nsmallest
>>> from collections import Counter
>>> A = [1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 6, 8, 7, 2, 6, 8, 7, 0]
>>> n = 3
>>> c = Counter(nsmallest(n, A))
>>> result = []
>>> for elem in A:
... if c.get(elem, 0):
... result.append(elem)
... c[elem] -= 1
...
>>> result
[1, 2, 0]

Python Array Diff

Write a function or program that will take 2 arrays of integers, "current" and "target", and produce 2 arrays representing an additions list and a deletions list such that applying the additions and deletions to the "current" array will yield the "target" array.
For example, given the following
inputs:
current = [1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9]
target = [1, 2, 5, 7, 9]
The outputs would be:
additions: [2, 7]
deletions: [3, 6, 8]
So that the following is true:
current([1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9]) + additions([2, 7]) - deletions([3, 6, 8]) = target([1, 2, 5, 7, 9])
Solution:
So far I have this:
---------------------------
# import array function
from array import array
# create an integer array named current
current = array('i', [1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9])
# add items from additions list into current array using the fromlist() method
additions = [2, 7]
current.fromlist(additions)
# remove items on deletions list from current array using the. remove() method
current.remove(3)
current.remove(6)
current.remove(8)
It will work for you...
def addlist(current,target):
add = []
intersection = set(current) & set(target)
for i in target:
if i not in intersection:
add.append(i)
return add
def removeList(current,target):
remove = []
intersection = set(current) & set(target)
for i in current:
if i not in intersection:
remove.append(i)
return remove
def main():
current = [1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9]
target = [1, 2, 5, 7, 9]
print(addlist(current,target))
print(removeList(current,target))
if __name__=="__main__":
main()
Below one should be easy to understand.
>>> current = [1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9]
>>> target = [1, 2, 5, 7, 9]
>>> set(current) & set(target)
set([1, 5, 9])
>>> unique = list(set(current) & set(target))
>>> additions = [i for i in target if i not in unique]
>>> additions
[2, 7]
>>> deletions = [i for i in current if i not in unique]
>>> deletions
[3, 6, 8]
>>>
This will work as well.
current = [1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9]
target = [1, 2, 5, 7, 9]
additions=[x for x in target if x not in current]
deletions=[x for x in current if x not in target]

Getting previous index values of a python list items after shuffling

Let's say I have such a python list:
l = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
by using random.shuffle,
>>> import random
>>> random.shuffle(l)
>>> l
[5, 3, 2, 0, 8, 7, 9, 6, 4, 1]
I am having the above list.
How can I get the previous index values list of each item in the shuffled list?
You could pair each item with its index using enumerate, then shuffle that.
>>> import random
>>> l = [4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42]
>>> x = list(enumerate(l))
>>> random.shuffle(x)
>>> indices, l = zip(*x)
>>> l
(4, 8, 15, 23, 42, 16)
>>> indices
(0, 1, 2, 4, 5, 3)
One advantage of this approach is that it works regardless of whether l contains duplicates.
If your values are unique, just use the list.index method. For example, you can do this:
import random
l = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
start_l = l[:]
random.shuffle(l)
for elem in l:
print(elem, '->', start_l.index(elem))
Of course, in your example this is trivial - each element is already it's initial index.
# gives the same result as above.
l = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
random.shuffle(l)
for elem in l:
print(elem, '->', elem)
In fact, the best method depends strongly on what you want to do. If you have other data, it might be simplest to just shuffle indices, not data. This avoids any problems of duplication etc. Basically you get a permutation list, where each element is the index the position is shifted to. For example, [2, 1, 0] is the permutation for reversing a list.
l = list(random.randint(0, 10) for _ in range(10))
l_idx = list(range(len(l))) # list of indices in l
random.shuffle(l_idx)
for new_idx, old_idx in enumerate(l_idx):
print(l[old_idx], '#', old_idx, '->', new_idx)
A more intuitive alternative to the other answers:
Shuffle a range of indices, and use that to get a shuffled list of the original values.
To keep track of everything using a dictionary, one can do this:
Use enumerate in your dictionary comprehension to have index and value in your iteration, and then assign value as key, and index as value.
import random
l = [5, 3, 2, 0, 8, 7, 9, 6, 4, 1]
d = {v: i for i, v in enumerate(l)}
print(d) # current state
random.shuffle(l)
The advantage here is that you get O(1) lookup for retrieving your index for whatever value you are looking up.
However, if your list will contain duplicates, this answer from Kevin should be referred to.
Create a copy of the original list and shuffle the copy:
>>> import random
>>> l = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> l_copy = list(l) # <-- Creating copy of the list
>>> random.shuffle(l_copy) # <-- Shuffling the copy
>>> l_copy # <-- Shuffled copy
[8, 7, 1, 3, 6, 5, 9, 2, 0, 4]
>>> l # <-- original list
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>>

Sort list values to get a new order of its index, Python way

Sorry for the vague of my question's title.
My question is, I have a list a = [6, 9, 8, 10, 7, 5, 2, 3, 1, 4]
I need to get the new order b = [4, 2, 3, 5, 1, 6, 10, 8, 7, 9], where the first element of b is 4 because the 4th element of a 10 is the largest number in a. Similarly, the 2nd element in b is 2 because the second large number in a is its second number 9
So, hopefully you got my question: Sort the list a and get the new order b.
Currently, I get it done by using list.sort with some prepare.
tmp = zip(range(1,11), a)
tmp.sort(key=lambda x:(-x[1],x[0]))
b = [x[0] for x in tmp]
I wonder whether there are better python way to achieve my goal?
Thanks for any suggestions~
I would just use the key argument to sort range(1, len(a) + 1) by using a's values.
sorted(range(1, len(a) + 1), key=lambda i: a[i-1], reverse=True)
That's basically the idea, but you can do:
import operator
tmp = sorted(enumerate(a,1),key=itemgetter(1,0),reverse=True)
b = [x[0] for x in tmp]
#In python2.x, the following are equivalent to the list comprehension.
#b = zip(*tmp)[0]
#b = map(itemgetter(0),tmp)
I think that enumerate is a little cleaner than zip with range and itemgetter is a little cleaner than lambda.
You could use sorted and enumerate:
print [el[0] for el in sorted(enumerate(a, start=1), key=lambda L: L[1], reverse=True)]
# [4, 2, 3, 5, 1, 6, 10, 8, 7, 9]
For completeness an alternative using numpy (should you happen to use it any time in the near future):
np.argsort(a)[::-1] + 1
a = [6, 9, 8, 10, 7, 5, 2, 3, 1, 4]
b = [6, 9, 8, 10, 7, 5, 2, 3, 1, 4]
a.sort(reverse = True)
print(a)
print(b)
c = [b.index(y)+1 for y in a ]
print(c)
i have just got this stupid answers...

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