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A (mostly) one-liner that cuts an iterable into X sized chunks...

Python, 10 lines
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>>> a,bite = "supercalifragalisticexpialidocious",3
>>> [(a[d:d+bite]) for d in range(len(a)-bite) if d%bite==0]

[('s', 'u', 'p'), ('e', 'r', 'c'), ('a', 'l', 'i'), ('f', 'r', 'a'), ('g', 'a', 'l'), ('i', 's', 't'), ('i', 'c', 'e'), ('x', 'p', 'i'), ('a', 'l', 'i'), ('d', 'o', 'c'), ('i', 'o', 'u')]

>>> # or on a list
>>> b =['sup', 'erc', 'ali', 'fra', 'gal', 'ist', 'ice', 'xpi', 'ali', 'doc', 'iou']
>>> 
>>> [(b[d:d+bite]) for d in range(len(b)-bite) if d%bite==0]
[['sup', 'erc', 'ali'], ['fra', 'gal', 'ist'], ['ice', 'xpi', 'ali']]

WARNING: This code truncates the data if the source data is not evenly divisible by the chunksize...

In my case, I knew the data was evenly divisible beforehand, so this was no problem...

If there is an easier way of doing this, please post it.

3 comments

Steven Bethard 18 years, 9 months ago  # | flag

Also, you can do this with:

zip(*[iter(s)]*bite)

So that your code works like:

py> bite = 3
py> a = "supercalifragalisticexpialidocious"
py> b = ['sup', 'erc', 'ali', 'fra', 'gal', 'ist', 'ice', 'xpi', 'ali', 'doc', 'iou']
py> zip(*[iter(a)]*bite)
[('s', 'u', 'p'), ('e', 'r', 'c'), ('a', 'l', 'i'), ('f', 'r', 'a'), ('g', 'a', 'l'), ('i', 's', 't'), ('i', 'c', 'e'), ('x', 'p', 'i'), ('a', 'l', 'i'), ('d', 'o', 'c'), ('i', 'o', 'u')]
py> zip(*[iter(b)]*bite)
[('sup', 'erc', 'ali'), ('fra', 'gal', 'ist'), ('ice', 'xpi', 'ali')]

However, Guido views this as an abuse of the argument parsing machinery.

Arkady Pogostkin 18 years, 9 months ago  # | flag

This might work better. [a[x:x+bite] for x in range(0,len(a),bite)]

Zoran Isailovski 18 years, 9 months ago  # | flag

... but it does not cut off the tail if len % bite != 0. If you need it, use

[s[x:x+bite] for x in range(0,len(s),bite) if x+bite<=len(s)]
Created by John Wundes on Thu, 23 Jun 2005 (PSF)
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