How to subtract lists in Python? List subtraction involves subtracting the corresponding elements from one list to another, producing a new list with the differences between each pair of elements at the same index. This operation is indeed similar to performing subtraction in mathematics. To perform list subtraction, the two input lists must have the same length. The subtraction operation is applied to each pair of elements at the same index in both lists. The resulting differences are then stored in a new list, preserving the order of the elements.

You can use list subtraction in Python using many ways, for example, by using the zip(), list comprehension, lambda, map(), – operator, operator.sub(), enumerate(), for loop, and np.subtract() functions. In this article, I will explain list subtraction by using all these methods with examples.

1. Quick Examples of Subtracting the List

If you are in a hurry, below are some quick examples of list subtraction.

# Quick examples of list subtraction

# Initialization lists
list1 = [2, 8, 5, 9, 3]
list2 = [1, 4, 6, 2, 8]

# Example 1: List Subtraction
# Using zip() function
result = [x – y for x, y in zip(list1, list2)]

# Example 2: Using the list comprehension and zip()
result = [round(x-y, 2) for x, y in zip(list1, list2)]

# Example 3: Using the lambda function with map() function
subtracted_list = list(map(lambda x, y: x-y, list1, list2))

# Example 4: List subtraction
# Using zip() and “-” operator
sub_list = []
zip_object = zip(list1, list2)
#loop to find diff of each element
for list1_i, list2_i in zip_object:
sub_list.append(list1_i – list2_i)

# Example 5: Using operator.sub() method
sub_list = list(map(operator.sub, list1, list2))

# Example 6: Using enumerate() function
sub_list = [element – list2[i] for i, element in enumerate(list1)]

# Example 7: Using for loop
sub_list = []
for i in range(len(list1)):
element = list1[i] – list2[i]
sub_list.append(element)

# Example 8: Using np.subtract() method
array1 = np.array(list1)
array2 = np.array(list2)
sub_array = np.subtract(array1, array2)
sub_list = list(sub_array)

2. List Subtraction Using zip() function

You can perform list subtraction using the zip() function. Simply, you can iterate over the zipped pairs of elements from the two lists and subtract them. For example, the zip() function is used to pair up the corresponding elements from list1 and list2. Then, a list comprehension subtracts the elements at each index using the variables x and y. The resulting list result contains the differences [1, 4, -1, 7, -5], which are the results of subtracting list2 from list1 element-wise.

# Initialize the lists
list1 = [2, 8, 5, 9, 3]
list2 = [1, 4, 6, 2, 8]

# List Subtraction
# Using zip() function
result = [x – y for x, y in zip(list1, list2)]
print(“First list:”, list1)
print(“Second list:”, list2)
print(“After subtracting the list:”, result)

Yields below output.

3. Using the List Comprehension and zip() Function

You can also calculate list subtraction using list comprehension and the zip() function. It subtracts corresponding elements from list2 from list1 and creates a new list with the results.

In the below example, zip(list1, list2) pairs up the elements at corresponding indices from list1 and list2. The list comprehension subtracts each pair of elements (x – y), rounds the result to 2 decimal places using round(), and stores the results in the result list. Finally, it prints the subtraction list, which is [1,4,-1,7,-5].

# Using the list comprehension and zip()
result = [round(x-y, 2) for x, y in zip(list1, list2)]
print(“After subtracting the list:”, result)