def count(a): r = [] last = 0 c = 0 for i, v in enumerate(a): if v: if not c: last = i c += 1 elif c: r.append((last, c)) c = 0 else: if c: r.append((last, c)) return r print(count([1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1])) # [(0, 4), (10, 1), (12, 1), (16, 6)]