How do I merge two lists into a single list?

Solution 1:

[j for i in zip(a,b) for j in i]

If the order of the elements much match the order in your example then you can use a combination of zip and chain:

from itertools import chain
c = list(chain(*zip(a,b)))

If you don't care about the order of the elements in your result then there's a simpler way:

c = a + b

Parsing

[item for pair in zip(a, b) for item in pair]

in your head is easy enough if you recall that the for and if clauses are done in order, followed a final append of the result:

temp = []
for pair in zip(a, b):
    for item in pair :
        temp.append(item )