How to Concatenate Multiple Lists in Python

Python lists allow you to store different types of data in one place and manipulate it easily. Sometimes you may need to concatenate or merge multiple lists in python. There are multiple ways to do this in python. In this article, we will look at the different ways to concatenate multiple lists in python.

How to Concatenate Multiple Lists in Python

Python provides tons of ways to concatenate lists. For our example, we will look at how to merge lists using

• itertools
• + operator
• * operator
• extend()

1. Using itertools.chain method

itertools.chain() method allows you to merge different iterables such as lists, tuples, strings, etc, and gives you a single list as output. It works on all data types in your iterables and is one of the fastest ways to merge lists.

Here is the syntax

itertools.chain(list1, list2, list3, ...)

Here is an example.

import itertools 
 
 
a = [1, 2, 3, 4] 
b = [5, 6, 7, 8] 
c = [9, 10, 11, 12] 
 
 
opt = list(itertools.chain(a,b,c)) 
 
opt
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]

2. Using * operator

Please note, this operator is available only in python 3.6+. The * operator is a very efficient way to combine lists in python. If you prepend * to a list name it returns the index position of that list.

Here is the syntax

[*list1, *list2, *list3]

Here is an example.

a = [1, 2, 3, 4] 
b = [5, 6, 7, 8] 
c = [9, 10, 11, 12] 

opt= [*a, *b, *c]

opt
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]

In the above code, *a, *b, *c unwraps and presents the list items at the specified index of new list.

3. Using + operator

The + operator allows you to easily concatenate lists, just as you concatenate strings. Here is its syntax.

list1 + list2 + list3 + ...

Here is an example.

a = [1, 2, 3, 4] 
b = [5, 6, 7, 8] 
c = [9, 10, 11, 12] 

opt= a + b + c

opt
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]

4. Using Extend()

When you use extend() function, python performs in place extension of first list. But please note, this will append the items of second list into first list and modify it. If you want to concatenate lists without modifying them then don’t use this method.

a.extend(b)
a
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]

In this article, we have learnt how to merge two lists using various methods. If you want to combine multiple lists without modifying them use itertools, + or * operator. Out of them, * operator is available in python 3.6+. If you want to combine two lists and store the result in first one, then use extend() function.

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