Zipping together unicode strings in Python

Question

I have the string:

a = \"ÀÁÂÃÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÒÓÔÕÖÙÚÛÜ\" b = \"àáâãäèéçêëìíîïòóôõöùúûüÿ\"

and I want to create the string

\"ÀàÁáÂâ...\"         


        

Answer 1

Maybe not beautiful, but working one.

>>> a_longer = len(a) > len(b)
>>> new_string = ""
>>> for i in range((min(len(a), len(b)))):
...     new_string += a[i] + b[i]
... 
>>> if a_longer:
...     new_string += a[i:]
... else:
...     new_string += b[i:]
... 
>>> print new_string
ÀàÁáÂâÃãÈäÉèÊéËçÌêÍëÎìÏíÒîÓïÔòÕóÖôÙõÚöÛùÜúúûüÿ

Or, with using zip:

>>> a = u'ÀÁÂÃÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÒÓÔÕÖÙÚÛÜ'
>>> b = u'àáâãäèéçêëìíîïòóôõöùúûüÿ'
>>> c = zip(a, b)
>>> new_string = "".join([a + b for a, b in c])
>>> print new_string
ÀàÁáÂâÃãÈäÉèÊéËçÌêÍëÎìÏíÒîÓïÔòÕóÖôÙõÚöÛùÜú

But watch out, that a zip method will not give you the rest of the 'b' string as it does not have a pair in 'a' string.