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Note from the author: This is inefficient. But fun, because monoids are awesome. It's not appropriate for production Python code.

>>> l = [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7], [8, 9]]
>>> sum(l, [])
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

This just sums the elements of iterable passed in the first argument, treating second argument as the initial value of the sum (if not given, 0 is used instead and this case will give you an error).

Because you are summing nested lists, you actually get [1,3]+[2,4] as a result of sum([[1,3],[2,4]],[]), which is equal to [1,3,2,4].

Note that only works on lists of lists. For lists of lists of lists, you'll need another solution.

Note from the author: This is very inefficient. But fun, because monoids are awesome.

>>> xss = [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7], [8, 9]]
>>> sum(xss, [])
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

sum sums the elements of the iterable xss, and uses the second argument as the initial value [] for the sum. (The default initial value is 0, which is not a list.)

Because you are summing nested lists, you actually get [1,3]+[2,4] as a result of sum([[1,3],[2,4]],[]), which is equal to [1,3,2,4].

Note that only works on lists of lists. For lists of lists of lists, you'll need another solution.

Note from the author: This is inefficient. But fun, because monoids are awesome. It's not appropriate for production Python code.

>>> sum(l, [])
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

This just sums the elements of iterable passed in the first argument, treating second argument as the initial value of the sum (if not given, 0 is used instead and this case will give you an error).

Because you are summing nested lists, you actually get [1,3]+[2,4] as a result of sum([[1,3],[2,4]],[]), which is equal to [1,3,2,4].

Note that only works on lists of lists. For lists of lists of lists, you'll need another solution.

Note from the author: This is inefficient. But fun, because monoids are awesome. It's not appropriate for production Python code.

>>> l = [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7], [8, 9]]
>>> sum(l, [])
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

This just sums the elements of iterable passed in the first argument, treating second argument as the initial value of the sum (if not given, 0 is used instead and this case will give you an error).

Because you are summing nested lists, you actually get [1,3]+[2,4] as a result of sum([[1,3],[2,4]],[]), which is equal to [1,3,2,4].

Note that only works on lists of lists. For lists of lists of lists, you'll need another solution.

Note from the author: This is inefficient. But fun, because monads are awesome. It's not appropriate for production Python code.

>>> sum(l, [])
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

This just sums the elements of iterable passed in the first argument, treating second argument as the initial value of the sum (if not given, 0 is used instead and this case will give you an error).

Because you are summing nested lists, you actually get [1,3]+[2,4] as a result of sum([[1,3],[2,4]],[]), which is equal to [1,3,2,4].

Note that only works on lists of lists. For lists of lists of lists, you'll need another solution.

Note from the author: This is inefficient. But fun, because monoids are awesome. It's not appropriate for production Python code.

>>> sum(l, [])
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

This just sums the elements of iterable passed in the first argument, treating second argument as the initial value of the sum (if not given, 0 is used instead and this case will give you an error).

Because you are summing nested lists, you actually get [1,3]+[2,4] as a result of sum([[1,3],[2,4]],[]), which is equal to [1,3,2,4].

Note that only works on lists of lists. For lists of lists of lists, you'll need another solution.