Concatenate two lists in Python
David Y.
—The Problem
How can I concatenate two lists in Python? In other words, how can I join two or more lists together to make one big list?
The Solution
We can do this using Python’s built-in operator overloading. When used with lists, the + operator will concatenate them, as shown below:
list1 = ["Apples", "Oranges", "Bananas"] list2 = ["Pears", "Grapes", "Pineapples"] combined = list1 + list2 print(combined) # output: ['Apples', 'Oranges', 'Bananas', 'Pears', 'Grapes', 'Pineapples']
Alternatively, we can use list.extend(), which will modify the first list:
list1 = ["Apples", "Oranges", "Bananas"] list2 = ["Pears", "Grapes", "Pineapples"] list1.extend(list2) print(list1) # output: ['Apples', 'Oranges', 'Bananas', 'Pears', 'Grapes', 'Pineapples']
To concatenate three or more lists, we can also use the + operator:
list1 = ["Apples", "Oranges", "Bananas"] list2 = ["Pears", "Grapes", "Pineapples"] list3 = ["Tangerines", "Apricots"] list4 = ["Pomegranates", "Watermelons", "Raspberries"] combined = list1 + list2 + list3 + list4 print(combined) # output: ['Apples', 'Oranges', 'Bananas', 'Pears', 'Grapes', 'Pineapples', 'Tangerines', 'Apricots', 'Pomegranates', 'Watermelons', 'Raspberries']
However, when combining more than two lists, itertools.chain() is more performant. Note that this method outputs an itertools.chain object, which must be typecast to a list, as shown below:
from itertools import chain list1 = ["Apples", "Oranges", "Bananas"] list2 = ["Pears", "Grapes", "Pineapples"] list3 = ["Tangerines", "Apricots"] list4 = ["Pomegranates", "Watermelons", "Raspberries"] combined = list(chain(list1, list2, list3, list4)) print(combined) # output: ['Apples', 'Oranges', 'Bananas', 'Pears', 'Grapes', 'Pineapples', 'Tangerines', 'Apricots', 'Pomegranates', 'Watermelons', 'Raspberries']
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