Flatten 2D List in Python

Here is a simple way to flatten 2D list in python.

l = [ [1,2], [3,4], [6,7], [8, 9,10] ]
sum( l, [] )

This will result in

[1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

Why is this even working?

The function sum(an_iterable_object) will simply use the operator + for the iterable object that was passed on to it. I can take in an optional parameter, i.e.,

sum(a_iterable_object, where_should_the_summation_start)

The operations would be like this:

result = where_should_the_summation_start or 0

for i in an_iterable_object:
   result = result + i

Suppose we have a nested list [ [1,2,3], [4,5] ], for each iteration, sum would simply concat the sublists together.

And, this is much faster than list comprehensions.

%%timeit
sum( l, [] )
# 309 ns ± 27.4 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

%%timeit
[i for sublist in l for i in sublist]
# 588 ns ± 33.2 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)