In your example I would compromise with: conf[w] = params[vals[line][column]] - params[vals[column][line]] or even: conf[w] = params[vals[l][c]] - pa

In your example I would compromise with: conf[w] = params[vals[line][column]] - params[vals[column][line]] or even: conf[w] = params[vals[l][c]] - params[vals[c][l]] if you really want to save a couple of characters. Confusing which loop index is indexing which dimension is far too easy.