Use itertools.chain() with theYou can use * operatoritertools.chain():
>>> import itertools
>>> list2d = [[1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7], [8,9]]
>>> merged = list(itertools.chain(*list2d))
Or you can use itertools.chain.from_iterable()itertools.chain.from_iterable() which doesn't require unpacking the list with the * operator:
>>> import itertools
>>> list2d = [[1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7], [8,9]]
>>> merged = list(itertools.chain.from_iterable(list2d))
This approach is arguably more readable than [item for sublist in l for item in sublist] and appears to be faster too:
$ python3 -mtimeit -s'l=[[1,2,3],[4,5,6], [7], [8,9]]*99;import itertools' 'list(itertools.chain.from_iterable(l))'
20000 loops, best of 5: 10.8 usec per loop
$ python3 -mtimeit -s'l=[[1,2,3],[4,5,6], [7], [8,9]]*99' '[item for sublist in l for item in sublist]'
10000 loops, best of 5: 21.7 usec per loop
$ python3 -mtimeit -s'l=[[1,2,3],[4,5,6], [7], [8,9]]*99' 'sum(l, [])'
1000 loops, best of 5: 258 usec per loop
$ python3 -mtimeit -s'l=[[1,2,3],[4,5,6], [7], [8,9]]*99;from functools import reduce' 'reduce(lambda x,y: x+y,l)'
1000 loops, best of 5: 292 usec per loop
$ python3 --version
Python 3.7.5rc1