If this is something you end up doing frequently, and with different operations, you should probably create a class to handle cases like this, or better use some library like Numpy.
If you plan on performing more than simple one liners, it would be better to implement your own class and override the appropriate operators as they apply to your case.
class Vector:
def __init__(self, data):
self.data = data
def __repr__(self):
return repr(self.data)
def __add__(self, other):
data = []
for j in range(len(self.data)):
data.append(self.data[j] + other.data[j])
return Vector(data)
x = Vector([1, 2, 3])
print x + x
Here's an alternative to list comprehensions. Map iterates through the list(s) (the latter arguments), doing so simulataneously, and passes their elements as arguments to the function (the first arg). It returns the resulting list.
import operator
map(operator.sub, a, b)
This code because has less syntax (which is more aesthetic for me), and apparently it's 40% faster for lists of length 5 (see bobince's comment). Still, either solution will work.
If speed is of interest, here is a review of the different solutions with respect to speed (from fastest to slowest)
import timeit
import operator
a = [2,2,2]
b = [1,1,1] # we want to obtain c = [2,2,2] - [1,1,1] = [1,1,1
%timeit map(operator.sub, a, b)
176 ns ± 7.18 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)
%timeit map(int.__sub__, a, b)
179 ns ± 4.95 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)
%timeit map(lambda x,y: x-y, a,b)
189 ns ± 8.1 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)
%timeit [a_i - b_i for a_i, b_i in zip(a, b)]
421 ns ± 18.4 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)
%timeit [x - b[i] for i, x in enumerate(a)]
452 ns ± 17.2 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each
%timeit [a[i] - b[i] for i in range(len(a))]
530 ns ± 16.7 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)
%timeit list(map(lambda x, y: x - y, a, b))
546 ns ± 16.1 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)
%timeit np.subtract(a,b)
2.68 µs ± 80.9 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100000 loops each)
%timeit list(np.array(a) - np.array(b))
2.82 µs ± 113 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100000 loops each)
%timeit np.matrix(a) - np.matrix(b)
12.3 µs ± 437 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100000 loops each)
Using map is clearly the fastest.
Surprisingly, numpy is the slowest. It turns out that the cost of first converting the lists a and b to a numpy array is a bottleneck that outweighs any efficiency gains from vectorization.
%timeit a = np.array([2,2,2]); b=np.array([1,1,1])
1.55 µs ± 54.9 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)
a = np.array([2,2,2])
b = np.array([1,1,1])
%timeit a - b
417 ns ± 12.8 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)