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2023-05-07 16:07:29 +03:00

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---
title: Merge lists
type: snippet
language: python
tags: [list]
cover: succulent-2
dateModified: 2020-11-02T19:28:27+02:00
---
Merges two or more lists into a list of lists, combining elements from each of the input lists based on their positions.
- Use `max()` combined with a list comprehension to get the length of the longest list in the arguments.
- Use `range()` in combination with the `max_length` variable to loop as many times as there are elements in the longest list.
- If a list is shorter than `max_length`, use `fill_value` for the remaining items (defaults to `None`).
- [`zip()`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html#zip) and [`itertools.zip_longest()`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/itertools.html#itertools.zip_longest) provide similar functionality to this snippet.
```py
def merge(*args, fill_value = None):
max_length = max([len(lst) for lst in args])
result = []
for i in range(max_length):
result.append([
args[k][i] if i < len(args[k]) else fill_value for k in range(len(args))
])
return result
```
```py
merge(['a', 'b'], [1, 2], [True, False]) # [['a', 1, True], ['b', 2, False]]
merge(['a'], [1, 2], [True, False]) # [['a', 1, True], [None, 2, False]]
merge(['a'], [1, 2], [True, False], fill_value = '_')
# [['a', 1, True], ['_', 2, False]]
```