Python: split a list based on a condition?

Question

What\'s the best way, both aesthetically and from a performance perspective, to split a list of items into multiple lists based on a conditional? The equivalent of:

Answer 1

I basically like Anders' approach as it is very general. Here's a version that puts the categorizer first (to match filter syntax) and uses a defaultdict (assumed imported).

def categorize(func, seq):
    """Return mapping from categories to lists
    of categorized items.
    """
    d = defaultdict(list)
    for item in seq:
        d[func(item)].append(item)
    return d