A better way to split up a list

[Tim Chase]

> The code below works fine, but it is less than nice to
> look at and somewhat long winded. Is there a better way
> to do the docstring task? This is the first working
> version, and can proabably be "compacted" a bit (list
> comprehensions etc) but I am looking for a better basic 
> approach. Any help much appreciated :)

It looks like there may be some problems with your code, 
such that it doesn't "work fine"...particularly in lists 
with 1, 2, or 3 elements.

The below "chopupmoves2" function does what you describe, 
and is nice and short.  A bunch of test-cases get generated 
and compared so you can see their output.  The 
chopupmoves2() function regularly returns your described 
results, while things seem a bit off with the chopupmoves()

HTH,

-tkc

from itertools import islice
def chopupmoves2(movelist):
     size = len(movelist) / 3
     return [
         movelist[:size],
         movelist[size:size*2],
         movelist[size*2:]]

def chopupmoves(movelist):
     '''creates a list of 3 lists from one list, that should 
all have
(length of movelist)/3 length, with any remainder getting 
added to the
third list'''
     outputlist = [[],[],[]]

     parlen = int(len(movelist)/3)
     if parlen < 3:
         parlen = 3

     stoplist=[0];exit = 0
     while exit < len(movelist):
         stoplist.append(exit+parlen)
         exit = exit + parlen
     while len(stoplist) > 4:
         stoplist.pop(len(stoplist)-1)
     stoplist[-1]=len(movelist)

     for x in range(len(stoplist)-1):
         for i in islice(movelist,stoplist[x],stoplist[x+1],1):
             outputlist[x].append(i)
     return outputlist
# test them with a bunch of test-cases
movelist =[]
for i in xrange(1,12):
     movelist.append(i)
     print "Movelist:", movelist
     print "\toriginal:", chopupmoves(movelist)
     print "\tTim's:   ", chopupmoves2(movelist)