Why does x y zip zip a b work in Python

Question

OK I love Python's zip() function. Use it all the time, it's brilliant. Every now and again I want to do the opposite of zip(), think "I used to know how to do that", then google python unzip, then remember that one uses this magical * to unzip a zipped list of tuples. Like this:

x = [1,2,3] y = [4,5,6] zipped = zip(x,y) unzipped_x, unzipped_y = zip(*zipped) unzipped_x Out[30]: (1, 2, 3) unzipped_y Out[31]: (4, 5, 6)

What on earth is going on? What is that magical asterisk doing? Where else can it be applied and what other amazing awesome things in Python are so mysterious and hard to google?

Answer 1

I'm extremely new to Python so this just recently tripped me up, but it had to do more with how the example was presented and what was emphasized.

What gave me problems with understanding the zip example was the asymmetry in the handling of the zip call return value(s). That is, when zip is called the first time, the return value is assigned to a single variable, thereby creating a list reference (containing the created tuple list). In the second call, it's leveraging Python's ability to automatically unpack a list (or collection?) return value into multiple variable references, each reference being the individual tuple. If someone isn't familiar with how that works in Python, it makes it easier to get lost as to what's actually happening.

>>> x = [1, 2, 3]
>>> y = "abc"
>>> zipped = zip(x, y)
>>> zipped [(1, 'a'), (2, 'b'), (3, 'c')]
>>> z1, z2, z3 = zip(x, y)
>>> z1 (1, 'a')
>>> z2 (2, 'b')
>>> z3 (3, 'c')
>>> rezipped = zip(*zipped)
>>> rezipped [(1, 2, 3), ('a', 'b', 'c')]
>>> rezipped2 = zip(z1, z2, z3)
>>> rezipped == rezipped2 
True