Question

I am trying to write alternating elements of multiple lists to a file using Python. I can write all of one list, and then all of another list, but am having difficulty doing it in an alternate order. My code looks like this:

foo = ['a', 'b', 'c']
bar = ['1', '2', '3']
fileout = open('zut.txt', 'w')
for i, el in foo, bar:
    fileout.write('%s\t%s' % (i, el))

However this produces a ValueError when I try and run it. For clarification, I am trying to produce a file like this:

a    1
b    2
c    3

Can anyone help me to achieve this? Thanks!

Answer 1

You can use the following code:

foo = ['a', 'b', 'c']
bar = ['1', '2', '3']
with open('zut.txt', 'w') as fileout:
    for x,y in zip(foo, bar):
        fileout.write('%s\t%s\n' % (x,y)) # you missed here '\n'

Read more about ‘zip’ and use ‘with open…’ to be sure that file will be automatically closed