How do you extract a column from a multi-dimensional array?

Question

Does anybody know how to extract a column from a multi-dimensional array in Python?

Answer 1

The itemgetter operator can help too, if you like map-reduce style python, rather than list comprehensions, for a little variety!

# tested in 2.4
from operator import itemgetter
def column(matrix,i):
    f = itemgetter(i)
    return map(f,matrix)

M = [range(x,x+5) for x in range(10)]
assert column(M,1) == range(1,11)

Answer 2

If you have an array like

a = [[1, 2], [2, 3], [3, 4]]

Then you extract the first column like that:

[row[0] for row in a]

So the result looks like this:

[1, 2, 3]