Simple List division problem

[thebjorn]

On Jan 12, 8:33 pm, Fredrik Lundh <fred... at pythonware.com> wrote:
> marcstuart wrote:
> > How do I divide a list into a set group of sublist's- if the list is
> > not evenly dividable ?  consider this example:
>
> > x = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
> > y = 3      # number of lists I want to break x into
> > z = y/x
>
> > what I would like to get is 3 sublists
>
> > print z[0] = [1,2,3]
> > print z[2] = [4,5,6]
> > print z[3] = [7,8,9,10]
>
> > obviously not even, one list will have 4 elements, the other 2 will
> > have 3.,
>
> here's one way to do it:
>
> # chop it up
> n = len(x) / y
> z = [x[i:i+n] for i in xrange(0, len(x), n)]
>
> # if the last piece is too short, add it to one before it
> if len(z[-1]) < n and len(z) > 1:
>      z[-2].extend(z.pop(-1))
>
> </F>

Eh...

def chop(lst, length):
    n = len(lst) / length
    z = [lst[i:i+n] for i in xrange(0, len(lst), n)]
    if len(z[-1]) < n and len(z) > 1:
         z[-2].extend(z.pop(-1))
    return z

gives

>>> chop(range(1,9), 3)
[[1, 2], [3, 4], [5, 6], [7, 8]]
>>> chop(range(1,8), 3)
[[1, 2], [3, 4], [5, 6, 7]]
>>> chop(range(1,6), 3)
[[1], [2], [3], [4], [5]]
>>> chop([1], 3)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "beforemeth.py", line 9, in chop
    if len(z[-1]) < n and len(z) > 1:
ValueError: xrange() arg 3 must not be zero

Perhaps something like this?

def chop(lst, length):
    from itertools import islice
    it = iter(lst)
    z = [list(islice(it, length)) for i in xrange(1 + len(lst) //
length)]
    if len(z) > 1:
        z[-2].extend(z.pop()) # the last item will be empty or contain
"overflow" elements.
    return z

-- bjorn