["python","list","multidimensional-array","flatten"]
How do I make a flat list out of a list of lists?

I have a list of lists like [ [1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7], [8, 9] ] How can I flatten it to get [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]? If your list of lists comes from a nested list comprehension, the problem can be solved more simply/directly by fixing the comprehension; please see How can I get a flat result from a list comprehension instead of a nested list?. The most popular solutions here generally only flatten one "level" of the nested list. See Flatten an irregular (arbitrarily nested) list of lists for solutions that completely flatten a deeply nested structure (recursively, in general).
A list of lists named xss can be flattened using a nested list comprehension: flat_list = [ x for xs in xss for x in xs ] The above is equivalent to: flat_list = [] for xs in xss: for x in xs: flat_list.append(x) Here is the corresponding function: def flatten(xss): return [x for xs in xss for x in xs] This is the fastest method. As evidence, using the timeit module in the standard library, we see: $ python -mtimeit -s'xss=[[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7],[8,9]]*99' '[x for xs in xss for x in xs]' 10000 loops, best of 3: 143 usec per loop $ python -mtimeit -s'xss=[[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7],[8,9]]*99' 'sum(xss, [])' 1000 loops, best of 3: 969 usec per loop $ python -mtimeit -s'xss=[[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7],[8,9]]*99' 'reduce(lambda xs, ys: xs + ys, xss)' 1000 loops, best of 3: 1.1 msec per loop Explanation: the methods 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 M items each: the first M items are copied back and forth L-1 times, the second M items L-2 times, and so on; total number of copies is M times the sum of x for x from 1 to L excluded, i.e., M * (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.