Split a vector into chunks

Question

I have to split a vector into n chunks of equal size in R. I couldn\'t find any base function to do that. Also Google didn\'t get me anywhere. Here is what I came up with so

Answer 1

A few more variants to the pile...

> x <- 1:10
> n <- 3

Note, that you don't need to use the factor function here, but you still want to sort o/w your first vector would be 1 2 3 10:

> chunk <- function(x, n) split(x, sort(rank(x) %% n))
> chunk(x,n)
$`0`
[1] 1 2 3
$`1`
[1] 4 5 6 7
$`2`
[1]  8  9 10

Or you can assign character indices, vice the numbers in left ticks above:

> my.chunk <- function(x, n) split(x, sort(rep(letters[1:n], each=n, len=length(x))))
> my.chunk(x, n)
$a
[1] 1 2 3 4
$b
[1] 5 6 7
$c
[1]  8  9 10

Or you can use plainword names stored in a vector. Note that using sort to get consecutive values in x alphabetizes the labels:

> my.other.chunk <- function(x, n) split(x, sort(rep(c("tom", "dick", "harry"), each=n, len=length(x))))
> my.other.chunk(x, n)
$dick
[1] 1 2 3
$harry
[1] 4 5 6
$tom
[1]  7  8  9 10