unzip function?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:33:34 -0500, Neal Becker wrote:

> python has builtin zip, but not unzip

That's because zip is (almost) its own inverse.

 
> A bit of googling found my answer for my decorate/sort/undecorate
> problem:
> a, b = zip (*sorted ((c,d) for c,d in zip (x,y)))

That does a lot of unnecessary work.

a, b = zip(*sorted(zip(x,y)))


> That zip (*sorted...
> 
> does the unzipping.
> 
> But it's less than intuitively obvious.

*shrug*

If you understand what zip does, it should be obvious.


> I'm thinking unzip should be a builtin function, to match zip.

Just create your own utility function. Not everything needs to be a 
built-in.

def unzip(iterable):
    return zip(*iterable)


Hardly seems worthwhile.


-- 
Steven