For Loop with two variables in Python

In this Python tutorial, you will learn to use for loop with two variables.

Table Of Contents

Introduction

In python, for loop is used to iterate elements from an iterable or sequence. The iterable can be a list, tuple, set, or dictionary. A for loop iterates over a sequence of elements in the iterable.

Syntax:

for iterator in iterable:
    statement 1
    statement 2
    .......
    .......
    statement n

Using for loop with two variables to iterate over dictionary.

A Dictionary is a key-value pair that stores data in the form of keys and values. So by using the items() method, we can iterate over keys and values pairs at a time using iterators inside for loop.

Syntax:

for key_iterator, value_iterator in dictionary_data.items():
    print(key_iterator,":",value_iterator)

Here,
1. key_iterator is used to return keys by iterating keys in a dictionary.
2. value_iterator is used to return values by iterating values in a dictionary.

Let’s dive into an example, to understand it better!!

In this example, we are creating a dictionary with 5 items (key: value pairs). It will display keys and values by using for loop with two iterators(key_iterator, value_iterator).

# Create dictionary with 5 items
dictionary_data = { 1: "welcome",
                    2: "to",
                    3: "thispointer",
                    4: "python",
                    5:"tutorial"}

# Iterate over keys and values from a dictionary
for key_iterator, value_iterator in dictionary_data.items():
    print(key_iterator,":",value_iterator)

Output:

1  : welcome
2 : to
3 : thispointer
4 : python
5 : tutorial

We can see that both keys and values are returned with a single for loop.

Using for loop with two variables with zip().

In Python, the zip() function is used to iterate one or more iterables at a time.

Syntax:

for iterator1, iterator2 in zip(data1,data2):
    print(iterator1, iterator2)

Here,

1. data1, data2 are the iterables(lists).
2. The iterator1 is used to iterate elements in data1 and iterator2 is used to iterate elements in data2.

By using zip() with for loop, we can combine these two lists and get the data from the two lists at a time. Let’s dive into an example, to understand it better!!

In this example, we are creating two lists with 5 elements each and display all elements from both lists by looping through them.

# Create data1 with 5 items
data1 = [1,2,3,4,5]

#Create data2 with 5 items
data2 = ["welcome","to","thispointer","python","tutorial"]

# Iterate over all elements from  both the lists 
for iterator1, iterator2 in zip(data1,data2):
    print(iterator1, iterator2)

Output:

1 welcome
2 to
3 thispointer
4 python
5 tutorial

In the above code, we combined two iterators using zip().

Example 2:

In this example, we are creating three lists and using for loop with three variables with zip().

# create data1 with 5 items
data1 = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

# create data2 with 5 items
data2 = ["welcome", "to", "thispointer", "python", "tutorial"]

# create data3 with 5 items
data3 = ["welcome", "to", "thispointer", "c++", "tutorial"]

# Iterate over all elements from  all the lists 
for iterator1, iterator2,iterator3 in zip(data1,data2,data3):
    print(iterator1, iterator2,iterator3)

Output:

1 welcome welcome
2 to to
3 thispointer thispointer
4 python c++
5 tutorial tutorial

From the above output, we can see that all the variables are combined.

Using for loop with two variables with enumerate().

In Python, the enumerate() function is used to return the index along with the element used for the loop in an iterable. Here, we can iterate two variables in for loop with iterators.

Syntax:

for iterator1, iterator2 in enumerate(data2):
    print(data1[iterator1],iterator2)

Here,

1. data1, data2 are the iterables(lists)
2. iterator1 is used to iterate elements in data1 and iterator2 is used to iterate elements in data2.

Let’s dive into an example, to understand it better!!

In this example, we are creating two lists with 5 elements each and display all elements from both lists by looping through them.

# create data1 with 5 items
data1 = [11, 22, 33, 44, 55]

# create data2 with 5 items
data2 = ["welcome", "to", "thispointer", "python", "tutorial"]

# Iterate over all elements from  all the lists 
for iterator1, iterator2 in enumerate(data2):
    print(data1[iterator1], iterator2)

Output:

11 welcome
22 to
33 thispointer
44 python
55 tutorial

In the above code, we are displaying the elements present in data1 and data2. As we know the first variable (iterator) displays the index, so we used [] to get elements present at each index.

Summary

By using zip() and enumerate(), we can iterate with two variables in a for loop. We can also iterate with two elements in a dictionary directly using for loop.