Splitting a list into N parts of approximately equal length

Question

What is the best way to divide a list into roughly equal parts? For example, if the list has 7 elements and is split it into 2 parts, we want to get 3 elements in o

Answer 1

This one provides chunks of length <= n, >= 0

def

 chunkify(lst, n):
    num_chunks = int(math.ceil(len(lst) / float(n))) if n < len(lst) else 1
    return [lst[n*i:n*(i+1)] for i in range(num_chunks)]

for example

>>> chunkify(range(11), 3)
[[0, 1, 2], [3, 4, 5], [6, 7, 8], [9, 10]]
>>> chunkify(range(11), 8)
[[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], [8, 9, 10]]

Answer 2

this code works for me (Python3-compatible):

def chunkify(tab, num):
    return [tab[i*num: i*num+num] for i in range(len(tab)//num+(1 if len(tab)%num else 0))]

example (for bytearray type, but it works for lists as well):

b = bytearray(b'\x01\x02\x03\x04\x05\x06\x07\x08')
>>> chunkify(b,3)
[bytearray(b'\x01\x02\x03'), bytearray(b'\x04\x05\x06'), bytearray(b'\x07\x08')]
>>> chunkify(b,4)
[bytearray(b'\x01\x02\x03\x04'), bytearray(b'\x05\x06\x07\x08')]

Answer 3

Implementation using numpy.linspace method.

Just specify the number of parts you want the array to be divided in to.The divisions will be of nearly equal size.

Example :

import numpy as np   
a=np.arange(10)
print "Input array:",a 
parts=3
i=np.linspace(np.min(a),np.max(a)+1,parts+1)
i=np.array(i,dtype='uint16') # Indices should be floats
split_arr=[]
for ind in range(i.size-1):
    split_arr.append(a[i[ind]:i[ind+1]]
print "Array split in to %d parts : "%(parts),split_arr

Gives :

Input array: [0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9]
Array split in to 3 parts :  [array([0, 1, 2]), array([3, 4, 5]), array([6, 7, 8, 9])]

Answer 4

def evenly(l, n):
    len_ = len(l)
    split_size = len_ // n
    split_size = n if not split_size else split_size
    offsets = [i for i in range(0, len_, split_size)]
    return [l[offset:offset + split_size] for offset in offsets]

Example:

l = [a for a in range(97)] should be consist of 10 parts, each have 9 elements except the last one.

Output:

[[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8],
 [9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17],
 [18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26],
 [27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35],
 [36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44],
 [45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53],
 [54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62],
 [63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71],
 [72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80],
 [81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89],
 [90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96]]

Answer 5

Changing the code to yield n chunks rather than chunks of n:

def chunks(l, n):
    """ Yield n successive chunks from l.
    """
    newn = int(len(l) / n)
    for i in xrange(0, n-1):
        yield l[i*newn:i*newn+newn]
    yield l[n*newn-newn:]

l = range(56)
three_chunks = chunks (l, 3)
print three_chunks.next()
print three_chunks.next()
print three_chunks.next()

which gives:

[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17]
[18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35]
[36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55]

This will assign the extra elements to the final group which is not perfect but well within your specification of "roughly N equal parts" :-) By that, I mean 56 elements would be better as (19,19,18) whereas this gives (18,18,20).

You can get the more balanced output with the following code:

#!/usr/bin/python
def chunks(l, n):
    """ Yield n successive chunks from l.
    """
    newn = int(1.0 * len(l) / n + 0.5)
    for i in xrange(0, n-1):
        yield l[i*newn:i*newn+newn]
    yield l[n*newn-newn:]

l = range(56)
three_chunks = chunks (l, 3)
print three_chunks.next()
print three_chunks.next()
print three_chunks.next()

which outputs:

[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18]
[19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37]
[38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55]

Answer 6

1>

import numpy as np

data # your array

total_length = len(data)
separate = 10
sub_array_size = total_length // separate
safe_separate = sub_array_size * separate

splited_lists = np.split(np.array(data[:safe_separate]), separate)
splited_lists[separate - 1] = np.concatenate(splited_lists[separate - 1], 
np.array(data[safe_separate:total_length]))

splited_lists # your output

2>

splited_lists = np.array_split(np.array(data), separate)