better way to write this function

[Paul Hankin]

On Nov 26, 7:42 am, Kelie <kf9... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> This function does I what I want. But I'm wondering if there is an
> easier/better way. To be honest, I don't have a good understanding of
> what "pythonic" means yet.
>
> def divide_list(lst, n):
>     """Divide a list into a number of lists, each with n items. Extra
> items are
>        ignored, if any."""
>     cnt = len(lst) / n
>     rv =  [[None for i in range(n)] for i in range(cnt)]
>     for i in range(cnt):
>         for j in range(n):
>             rv[i][j] = lst[i * n + j]
>     return rv
>
> Thanks!

Here's a terrible way to do it:

def divide_list(lst, n):
    return zip(*[lst[i::n] for i in range(n)])

[It produces a list of tuples rather than a list of lists, but it
usually won't matter].

--
Paul Hankin