Rolling or sliding window iterator?

Question

I need a rolling window (aka sliding window) iterable over a sequence/iterator/generator. Default Python iteration can be considered a special case, where the window length

Answer 1

Here's a generalization that adds support for step, fillvalue parameters:

from collections import deque
from itertools import islice

def sliding_window(iterable, size=2, step=1, fillvalue=None):
    if size < 0 or step < 1:
        raise ValueError
    it = iter(iterable)
    q = deque(islice(it, size), maxlen=size)
    if not q:
        return  # empty iterable or size == 0
    q.extend(fillvalue for _ in range(size - len(q)))  # pad to size
    while True:
        yield iter(q)  # iter() to avoid accidental outside modifications
        try:
            q.append(next(it))
        except StopIteration: # Python 3.5 pep 479 support
            return
        q.extend(next(it, fillvalue) for _ in range(step - 1))

It yields in chunks size items at a time rolling step positions per iteration padding each chunk with fillvalue if necessary. Example for size=4, step=3, fillvalue='*':

 [a b c d]e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
  a b c[d e f g]h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
  a b c d e f[g h i j]k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
  a b c d e f g h i[j k l m]n o p q r s t u v w x y z
  a b c d e f g h i j k l[m n o p]q r s t u v w x y z
  a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o[p q r s]t u v w x y z
  a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r[s t u v]w x y z
  a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u[v w x y]z
  a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x[y z * *]

For an example of use case for the step parameter, see Processing a large .txt file in python efficiently.