How to multiply the two nearby elements in a list?

Question

I have a list like below:

a = [ 1, 2 , 3, 4, s, s+1] 

I want to keep the first two elements and then multiply the rest two nearby elements. The result would be like below:

b = [1, 2, 12, s**2 + s]

I know if I want the summation, I can use the code below:

b = [*a[:2], *map(sum, (a[i: i + 2] for i in range(2, len(a), 2)))]
print (b)

and I will get the result which is : [1, 2, 7, 2*s + 1] However, I don't know how to get the multpilication result. Thanks

Answer 1

Define a customized multiplication function:

def mul(lst):
    s = 1
    for x in lst:
        s *= x
    return s

[*a[:2], *map(mul, (a[i: i + 2] for i in range(2, len(a), 2)))]