Python Program to Transpose a Matrix

In this example, you will learn to transpose a matrix (which is created by using a nested list).

To understand this example, you should have the knowledge of the following Python programming topics:

• Python for Loop
• Python List

In Python, we can implement a matrix as a nested list (list inside a list). We can treat each element as a row of the matrix.

For example X = [[1, 2], [4, 5], [3, 6]] would represent a 3×2 matrix. The first row can be selected as X[0]. And, the element in the first-row first column can be selected as X[0][0].

Transpose of a matrix is the interchanging of rows and columns. It is denoted as X’. The element at ith row and jth column in X will be placed at jth row and ith column in X’. So if X is a 3×2 matrix, X’ will be a 2×3 matrix.

Here are a couple of ways to accomplish this in Python.

1. Matrix Transpose using Nested Loop

# Program to transpose a matrix using a nested loop

X = [[12,7],
    [4 ,5],
    [3 ,8]]

result = [[0,0,0],
         [0,0,0]]

# iterate through rows
for i in range(len(X)):
   # iterate through columns
   for j in range(len(X[0])):
       result[j][i] = X[i][j]

for r in result:
   print(r)

Output

[12, 4, 3]
[7, 5, 8]

In this program, we have used nested for loops to iterate through each row and each column. At each point we place the X[i][j] element into result[j][i].

2. Matrix Transpose using Nested List Comprehension

''' Program to transpose a matrix using list comprehension'''

X = [[12,7],
    [4 ,5],
    [3 ,8]]

result = [[X[j][i] for j in range(len(X))] for i in range(len(X[0]))]

for r in result:
   print(r)

The output of this program is the same as above. We have used nested list comprehension to iterate through each element in the matrix.