Working with Zip, Search, and Variable Arguments in Python

Why I studied this

I wanted to learn how to combine data from multiple lists using zip, understand how basic search works, and define functions that accept a flexible number of arguments.

---

What I did

1. Combining lists with zip()

a = ["a", "b", "c", "d", "e"]
b = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

for item in zip(a, b, a):
    print(item)

This combines values from the lists into tuples.
zip() pairs elements based on index position.

---

2. Understanding sequential (linear) search

# Sequential search reads data one by one
# Time complexity: O(n)

for i in range(0, n):
    if data[i] == key:
        return i
return -1

This method checks each element one by one until it finds the target.
The worst-case time is proportional to the size of the list (O(n)).

---

3. Variable argument functions with *args

Basic usage

def myadd(*args):
    for a in args:
        print(a)

myadd(1, 2)
myadd(1, 2, 3)

*args allows the function to receive any number of arguments.
These are packed into a tuple.

---

Adding all values with *args

def myadd2(*data):
    s = 0
    for i in data:
        s += i
    return s

print(myadd2(1, 3, 5))           # 9
print(myadd2(1, 3, 5, 7, 9))     # 25

Functions with *args are useful when the number of inputs is not fixed.

---

What I learned

• zip() is useful to merge lists into tuples based on index.
• Sequential search is simple but not fast for large data.
• *args helps write flexible and reusable functions.

---

What I want to do next

I want to combine *args with other logic like conditions or loops, and also try using zip() to format data for printing or analysis.