How to Make a Flat List Out of a List of Lists

How do I make a flat list out of a list of lists?

Given a list of lists l,

flat_list = [item for sublist in l for item in sublist]

which means:

flat_list = []
for sublist in l:
    for item in sublist:
        flat_list.append(item)

is faster than the shortcuts posted so far. (l is the list to flatten.)

Here is the corresponding function:

def flatten(l):
    return [item for sublist in l for item in sublist]

As evidence, you can use the timeit module in the standard library:

$ python -mtimeit -s'l=[[1,2,3],[4,5,6], [7], [8,9]]*99' '[item for sublist in l for item in sublist]'
10000 loops, best of 3: 143 usec per loop
$ python -mtimeit -s'l=[[1,2,3],[4,5,6], [7], [8,9]]*99' 'sum(l, [])'
1000 loops, best of 3: 969 usec per loop
$ python -mtimeit -s'l=[[1,2,3],[4,5,6], [7], [8,9]]*99' 'reduce(lambda x,y: x+y,l)'
1000 loops, best of 3: 1.1 msec per loop

Explanation: the shortcuts based on + (including the implied use in sum) are, of necessity, O(L**2) when there are L sublists -- as the intermediate result list keeps getting longer, at each step a new intermediate result list object gets allocated, and all the items in the previous intermediate result must be copied over (as well as a few new ones added at the end). So, for simplicity and without actual loss of generality, say you have L sublists of I items each: the first I items are copied back and forth L-1 times, the second I items L-2 times, and so on; total number of copies is I times the sum of x for x from 1 to L excluded, i.e., I * (L**2)/2.

The list comprehension just generates one list, once, and copies each item over (from its original place of residence to the result list) also exactly once.

Flatten an irregular list of lists

Using generator functions can make your example easier to read and improve performance.

Python 2

Using the Iterable ABC added in 2.6:

from collections import Iterable

def flatten(xs):
    for x in xs:
        if isinstance(x, Iterable) and not isinstance(x, basestring):
            for item in flatten(x):
                yield item
        else:
            yield x

Python 3

In Python 3, basestring is no more, but the tuple (str, bytes) gives the same effect. Also, the yield from operator returns an item from a generator one at a time.

from collections.abc import Iterable

def flatten(xs):
    for x in xs:
        if isinstance(x, Iterable) and not isinstance(x, (str, bytes)):
            yield from flatten(x)
        else:
            yield x

How to get a flat list while avoiding to make a nested list in the first place?

You can use multiple fors in a single comprehension:

result = [
    n
    for foo in list_of_foos
    for n in foo.l
]

Note that the order of fors is from the outside in -- same as if you wrote a nested for-loop:

for foo in list_of_foos:
    for n in foo.l:
        print(n)

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