Compute the cumulative sum of a list until a zero appears

Question

I have a (long) list in which zeros and ones appear at random:

list_a = [1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1]

I want to get the list_b

Answer 1

You are playing with the indices too much in the code you posted when you do not really have to. You can just keep track of a cumulative sum and reset it to 0 every time you meet a 0.

list_a = [1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1]

cum_sum = 0
list_b = []
for item in list_a:
    if not item:            # if our item is 0
        cum_sum = 0         # the cumulative sum is reset (set back to 0)
    else:
        cum_sum += item     # otherwise it sums further
    list_b.append(cum_sum)  # and no matter what it gets appended to the result
print(list_b)  # -> [1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 0, 1, 2, 3]