Carl Johnson wrote:
So, going back to the first example, wouldn't it be nicer to write:
for x, y, z in combine(xs, ys, zs): #Do something
If nothing else, this has the advantage that if you don't have to nest the for-loops, things don't end up being so deeply indented on the screen.
FWIW, I find myself doing this often with numpy: for index in numpy.ndindex(arr.shape): # do something using arr's indexes, whatever they are (Broadcasting is better, but sometimes this is unavoidable.) The point is there's a general use-case Carl left out: what if you don't know how deeply you'll need to nest? Our Functional friends know the answer to this, but IIRC the Python design philosophy doesn't actively encourage recursive solutions. I don't think the use-cases are common enough to warrant a new builtin (though that's just my $0.000001 opinion - it may be that *everyone* will want to flatten their nested loops), but something like "combine" would fit very well into itertools. Neil