How do I use itertools.groupby()?

Question

I haven\'t been able to find an understandable explanation of how to actually use Python\'s itertools.groupby() function. What I\'m trying to do is this:

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Answer 1

itertools.groupby is a tool for grouping items.

From the docs, we glean further what it might do:

# [k for k, g in groupby('AAAABBBCCDAABBB')] --> A B C D A B

# [list(g) for k, g in groupby('AAAABBBCCD')] --> AAAA BBB CC D

groupby objects yield key-group pairs where the group is a generator.

Features

• A. Group consecutive items together
• B. Group all occurrences of an item, given a sorted iterable
• C. Specify how to group items with a key function ^*

Comparisons

# Define a printer for comparing outputs
>>> def print_groupby(iterable, keyfunc=None):
...    for k, g in it.groupby(iterable, keyfunc):
...        print("key: '{}'--> group: {}".format(k, list(g)))

# Feature A: group consecutive occurrences
>>> print_groupby("BCAACACAADBBB")
key: 'B'--> group: ['B']
key: 'C'--> group: ['C']
key: 'A'--> group: ['A', 'A']
key: 'C'--> group: ['C']
key: 'A'--> group: ['A']
key: 'C'--> group: ['C']
key: 'A'--> group: ['A', 'A']
key: 'D'--> group: ['D']
key: 'B'--> group: ['B', 'B', 'B']

# Feature B: group all occurrences
>>> print_groupby(sorted("BCAACACAADBBB"))
key: 'A'--> group: ['A', 'A', 'A', 'A', 'A']
key: 'B'--> group: ['B', 'B', 'B', 'B']
key: 'C'--> group: ['C', 'C', 'C']
key: 'D'--> group: ['D']

# Feature C: group by a key function
>>> # islower = lambda s: s.islower()                      # equivalent
>>> def islower(s):
...     """Return True if a string is lowercase, else False."""   
...     return s.islower()
>>> print_groupby(sorted("bCAaCacAADBbB"), keyfunc=islower)
key: 'False'--> group: ['A', 'A', 'A', 'B', 'B', 'C', 'C', 'D']
key: 'True'--> group: ['a', 'a', 'b', 'b', 'c']

Uses

• Anagrams (see notebook)
• Binning
• Group odd and even numbers
• Group a list by values
• Remove duplicate elements
• Find indices of repeated elements in an array
• Split an array into n-sized chunks
• Find corresponding elements between two lists
• Compression algorithm (see notebook)/Run Length Encoding
• Grouping letters by length, key function (see notebook)
• Consecutive values over a threshold (see notebook)
• Find ranges of numbers in a list or continuous items (see docs)
• Find all related longest sequences
• Take consecutive sequences that meet a condition (see related post)

Note: Several of the latter examples derive from Víctor Terrón's PyCon (talk) (Spanish), "Kung Fu at Dawn with Itertools". See also the groupby source code written in C.

^{* A function where all items are passed through and compared, influencing the result. Other objects with key functions include sorted(), max() and min().}

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Response

# OP: Yes, you can use `groupby`, e.g. 
[do_something(list(g)) for _, g in groupby(lxml_elements, criteria_func)]