Transpose list of lists

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Let's take:

l = [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9]]

The result I'm looking for is

r = [[1, 4, 7], [2, 5, 8], [3, 6, 9]]

and not

r = [(1, 4, 7), (2, 5, 8), (3, 6, 9)]
14 Answers

more_itertools.unzip() is easy to read, and it also works with generators.

import more_itertools
l = [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9]]
r = more_itertools.unzip(l) # a tuple of generators.
r = list(map(list, r))      # a list of lists

or equivalently

import more_itertools
l = more_itertools.chunked(range(1,10), 3)
r = more_itertools.unzip(l) # a tuple of generators.
r = list(map(list, r))      # a list of lists
matrix = [[1,2,3],
          [1,2,3],
          [1,2,3],
          [1,2,3],
          [1,2,3],
          [1,2,3],
          [1,2,3]]
    
rows = len(matrix)
cols = len(matrix[0])

transposed = []
while len(transposed) < cols:
    transposed.append([])
    while len(transposed[-1]) < rows:
        transposed[-1].append(0)

for i in range(rows):
    for j in range(cols):
        transposed[j][i] = matrix[i][j]

for i in transposed:
    print(i)

One more way for square matrix. No numpy, nor itertools, use (effective) in-place elements exchange.

def transpose(m):
    for i in range(1, len(m)):
        for j in range(i):
            m[i][j], m[j][i] = m[j][i], m[i][j]

Just for fun: If you then want to make them all into dicts.

In [1]: l = [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9]]
   ...: fruits = ["Apple", "Pear", "Peach",]
   ...: [dict(zip(fruits, j)) for j in [list(i) for i in zip(*l)]]
Out[1]:
[{'Apple': 1, 'Pear': 4, 'Peach': 7},
 {'Apple': 2, 'Pear': 5, 'Peach': 8},
 {'Apple': 3, 'Pear': 6, 'Peach': 9}]
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