Distribute an integer amount by a set of slots as evenly as possible

Question

I am trying to figure an elegant way of implementing the distribution of an amount into a given set of slots in python.

For example:

7 oranges distributed onto 4

Answer 1

See also more_itertools.distribute, a third-party tool and its source code.

Code

Here we distributes m items into n bins, one-by-one, and count each bin.

import more_itertools as mit


def sum_distrib(m, n):
    """Return an iterable of m items distributed across n spaces."""
    return [sum(x) for x in mit.distribute(n, [1]*m)]

Demo

sum_distrib(10, 4)
# [3, 3, 2, 2]

sum_distrib(7, 4)
# [2, 2, 2, 1]

sum_distrib(23, 17)
# [2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1]

---

Example

This idea is akin to distributing a deck of cards among players. Here is an initial game of Slapjack

import random
import itertools as it


players = 8
suits = list("♠♡♢♣")
ranks = list(range(2, 11)) + list("JQKA")
deck = list(it.product(ranks, suits))
random.shuffle(deck)

hands = [list(hand) for hand in mit.distribute(players, deck)]
hands
# [[('A', '♣'), (9, '♠'), ('K', '♣'), (7, '♢'), ('A', '♠'), (5, '♠'), (2, '♠')],
#  [(6, '♣'), ('Q', '♠'), (5, '♢'), (5, '♡'), (3, '♡'), (8, '♡'), (7, '♣')],
#  [(7, '♡'), (9, '♢'), (2, '♢'), (9, '♡'), (7, '♠'), ('K', '♠')],
#   ...]

where the cards are distributed "as equally as possible between all [8] players":

[len(hand) for hand in hands]
# [7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6, 6]