Python using enumerate inside list comprehension

Try this:

[(i, j) for i, j in enumerate(mylist)]

You need to put i,j inside a tuple for the list comprehension to work. Alternatively, given that enumerate() already returns a tuple, you can return it directly without unpacking it first:

[pair for pair in enumerate(mylist)]

Either way, the result that gets returned is as expected:

> [(0, 'a'), (1, 'b'), (2, 'c'), (3, 'd')]

Just to be really clear, this has nothing to do with enumerate and everything to do with list comprehension syntax.

This list comprehension returns a list of tuples:

[(i,j) for i in range(3) for j in 'abc']

this a list of dicts:

[{i:j} for i in range(3) for j in 'abc']

a list of lists:

[[i,j] for i in range(3) for j in 'abc']

a syntax error:

[i,j for i in range(3) for j in 'abc']

Which is inconsistent (IMHO) and confusing with dictionary comprehensions syntax:

>>> {i:j for i,j in enumerate('abcdef')}
{0: 'a', 1: 'b', 2: 'c', 3: 'd', 4: 'e', 5: 'f'}

And a set of tuples:

>>> {(i,j) for i,j in enumerate('abcdef')}
set([(0, 'a'), (4, 'e'), (1, 'b'), (2, 'c'), (5, 'f'), (3, 'd')])

As Óscar López stated, you can just pass the enumerate tuple directly:

>>> [t for t in enumerate('abcdef') ] 
[(0, 'a'), (1, 'b'), (2, 'c'), (3, 'd'), (4, 'e'), (5, 'f')]

Or, if you don't insist on using a list comprehension:

>>> mylist = ["a","b","c","d"]
>>> list(enumerate(mylist))
[(0, 'a'), (1, 'b'), (2, 'c'), (3, 'd')]