unzip array of arrays?

[Chris Rebert]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 12:37 PM, Tobiah <toby at tobiah.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:13:34 -0800, Chris Rebert wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 2:04 PM, Tobiah <toby at tobiah.org> wrote:
>>> Although it's trivial to program, I wondered whether
>>> there was a builtin or particularly concise way to
>>> express this idea:
>>>
>>>> a = [(1, 2), (3, 4), (5, 6)]
>>>> field[a, 2]
>>> [2, 4, 6]
>>>
>>> where field() is some made up function.
>>
>> Python 2.6 (r26:66714, Nov 18 2008, 21:48:52)
>> [GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5484)] on darwin
>> Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>>> a= [(1, 2), (3, 4), (5, 6)]
>>>>> zip(*a)
>> [(1, 3, 5), (2, 4, 6)]
>>>>> zip(*a)[1]
>> (2, 4, 6)
>
> That would be what I was after.  Where can I read about
> this mysterious use of the '*'?  It only works in the
> context of the zip() function.  It's hard to understand
> how the interpreter handles that.

It works in all functions.

Basically:
f(*[1,2,3]) === f(1,2,3)

I'm sure someone will also point out the docs.

Cheers,
Chris

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