how to indexing pandas dataframe with index list?

Question

I have a dataframe like the belows.

df
   a  b  c
w  5  3  3
x  4  7  6
y  6  2  5
z  2  6  2

And I have a list like belows.

a
[['w', 'x', 'w'], 
['x', 'y', 'y']]

How can I get the results like

[[5,7,3],
[4,2,5]]

If the only way is using a for loop, which is the fastest way?

Answer 1

I think for loop should be fast enough

[[df.loc[z,y] for z,y in zip(x,df.columns)] for x in l ]
Out[981]: [[5, 7, 3], [4, 2, 5]]

Answer 2

Assuming length of sub-lists are always the same as the length of columns

[[*df.lookup(i, df.columns)] for i in a]

[[5, 7, 3], [4, 2, 5]]