Rotate sequences left or right

The sequences does not need to be of square arity for functions to work, here another helper for the 'tetris' case:

>>> a = ['***', ' * ']
>>> def strrot(string_seq, rotation=rot_left, fun=''.join, times=1):
	for count in range(times):
		string_seq = map(fun, rotation(string_seq))
	return '\n'.join(string_seq)

>>> strrot(a)
'* \n**\n* '
>>> print strrot(a)
* 
**
* 
>>> print strrot(a, times=2)
 * 
***
>>> print strrot(a, times=3)
 *
**
 *
>>> print strrot(a, rotation=rot_right)
 *
**
 *
>>> print strrot(a, rotation=rot_right, times=2)
 * 
***

Another interesting aplication for the generalized principle:

""" rotating histogram by functions rot_left, rot_left and strrot """

def p(a, sep='', groupsep=40*'-'):
    """ print sequences in separate lines and line separation sep """
    for line in a: print(sep.join(line))
    print(groupsep)

def rot_left(a):
    return list(zip(*a)[::-1])

def rot_right(a):
    return list(zip(*a[::-1]))

def strrot(string_seq, rotation=rot_left, fun=''.join, times=1):
	for count in range(times):
		string_seq = map(fun, rotation(string_seq))
	return string_seq

if __name__ == '__main__':
    histo = """
red    ***********
yellow *************
brown  ****
"""
    histo = histo.split('\n')
    histo = [' '.join(''.join(word[::-1]) for word in line.split(' '))  for line in histo]
    linemax = len(max(histo, key=len))
    histo = [line.ljust(linemax) for line in histo if line]
    p(strrot(histo), sep =' ')
""" Output:
  *  
  *  
* *  
* *  
* *  
* *  
* *  
* *  
* *  
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
     
  y  
  e b
  l r
r l o
e o w
d w n
----------------------------------------
"""

Here is how I would code it to get rid of the 'rotation' argument and make it a little faster

def strrot(string_seq, times = 1):
    times %= 4
    if times % 2:
        string_seq = reversed(zip(*string_seq)) if times == 1 else zip(*reversed(string_seq))
        return [''.join(t) for t in string_seq]
    else:
	    return reversed([s[::-1] for s in string_seq]) if times else string_seq

To rotate right, pass times = -1, or -44445 :)

Thanks fro your analysis Gribouillis, interesting rotation of reversed, zip and * for odd cases. I did little different single if case-like statement vesion of it, so:

""" rotating histogram by functions rot_left, rot_left and strrot """

def p(a, sep='', groupsep=40*'-'):
    """ print sequences in separate lines and line separation sep """
    for line in a: print(sep.join(line))
    print(groupsep)

def rot_left(a):
    return list(zip(*a)[::-1])

def rot_right(a):
    return list(zip(*a[::-1]))

def strrot(string_seq, times = 1):
    times &= 0b11
    if not times:
        return string_seq
    elif times == 2:
        return list(reversed([s[::-1] for s in string_seq]))
    elif times == 3 :
       string_seq = zip(*reversed(string_seq))
    else:
        string_seq = list(reversed(zip(*string_seq)))
        
    return [''.join(t) for t in string_seq]
    

if __name__ == '__main__':
    t = ['***', '*  ']
    for count in range(1,5):
        print('Left rotate %i:\n' % count)
        p(strrot(t, times=count))
    print(60*'=')
    print('Right rotate variations')
    p(strrot(t, -44445))
    p(strrot(t, -1))
    p(strrot(t, 3))

The python deque (double ended que) is good for left/right rotation

from collections import deque # Double-ended Que

stringToRotate = "hello"

alpha = 'hello' # This is your reference

dq = deque(alpha) # make double ended

amount = 2

dq.rotate(amount)# positive values drags to the right - negative to the left

rotatedString = "" # define for later

for letter in stringToRotate:

    if letter in alpha:

        index_alpha = alpha.index(letter) # Get original position of letter
        rotatedString += dq[index_alpha] # add the rotated letter to string
        
print rotatedString