how to split an iterable in constant-size chunks

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How do you split a list into evenly sized chunks in Python?

I am surprised I could not find a "batch" function that would take as input an iterable and return an iterable of iterables.

For example:

for i in batch(range(0,10), 1): print i
[0]
[1]
...
[9]

or:

for i in batch(range(0,10), 3): print i
[0,1,2]
[3,4,5]
[6,7,8]
[9]

Now, I wrote what I thought was a pretty simple generator:

def batch(iterable, n = 1):
   current_batch = []
   for item in iterable:
       current_batch.append(item)
       if len(current_batch) == n:
           yield current_batch
           current_batch = []
   if current_batch:
       yield current_batch

But the above does not give me what I would have expected:

for x in   batch(range(0,10),3): print x
[0]
[0, 1]
[0, 1, 2]
[3]
[3, 4]
[3, 4, 5]
[6]
[6, 7]
[6, 7, 8]
[9]

So, I have missed something and this probably shows my complete lack of understanding of python generators. Anyone would care to point me in the right direction ?

[Edit: I eventually realized that the above behavior happens only when I run this within ipython rather than python itself]

Answer 1

This is probably more efficient (faster)

def batch(iterable, n=1):
    l = len(iterable)
    for ndx in range(0, l, n):
        yield iterable[ndx:min(ndx + n, l)]

for x in batch(range(0, 10), 3):
    print x

It avoids building new lists.

Answer 2

FWIW, the recipes in the itertools module provides this example:

def grouper(n, iterable, fillvalue=None):
    "grouper(3, 'ABCDEFG', 'x') --> ABC DEF Gxx"
    args = [iter(iterable)] * n
    return izip_longest(fillvalue=fillvalue, *args)

It works like this:

>>> list(grouper(3, range(10)))
[(0, 1, 2), (3, 4, 5), (6, 7, 8), (9, None, None)]

Answer 3

As others have noted, the code you have given does exactly what you want. For another approach using itertools.islice you could see an example of following recipe:

from itertools import islice, chain

def batch(iterable, size):
    sourceiter = iter(iterable)
    while True:
        batchiter = islice(sourceiter, size)
        yield chain([batchiter.next()], batchiter)

Answer 4

Weird, seems to work fine for me in Python 2.x

>>> def batch(iterable, n = 1):
...    current_batch = []
...    for item in iterable:
...        current_batch.append(item)
...        if len(current_batch) == n:
...            yield current_batch
...            current_batch = []
...    if current_batch:
...        yield current_batch
...
>>> for x in batch(range(0, 10), 3):
...     print x
...
[0, 1, 2]
[3, 4, 5]
[6, 7, 8]
[9]

Answer 5

This is what I use in my project. It handles iterables or lists as efficiently as possible.

def chunker(iterable, size):
    if not hasattr(iterable, "__len__"):
        # generators don't have len, so fall back to slower
        # method that works with generators
        for chunk in chunker_gen(iterable, size):
            yield chunk
        return

    it = iter(iterable)
    for i in range(0, len(iterable), size):
        yield [k for k in islice(it, size)]


def chunker_gen(generator, size):
    iterator = iter(generator)
    for first in iterator:

        def chunk():
            yield first
            for more in islice(iterator, size - 1):
                yield more

        yield [k for k in chunk()]

Answer 6

Here is an approach using reduce function.

Oneliner:

from functools import reduce
reduce(lambda cumulator,item: cumulator[-1].append(item) or cumulator if len(cumulator[-1]) < batch_size else cumulator + [[item]], input_array, [[]])

Or more readable version:

from functools import reduce
def batch(input_list, batch_size):
  def reducer(cumulator, item):
    if len(cumulator[-1]) < batch_size:
      cumulator[-1].append(item)
      return cumulator
    else:
      cumulator.append([item])
    return cumulator
  return reduce(reducer, input_list, [[]])

Test:

>>> batch([1,2,3,4,5,6,7], 3)
[[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7]]
>>> batch(a, 8)
[[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]]
>>> batch([1,2,3,None,4], 3)
[[1, 2, 3], [None, 4]]

Answer 7

I just gave one answer. However, now I feel the best solution might be not writing any new functions. More-itertools includes plenty of additional tools, and chunked is amongst them.

Answer 8

This would work for any iterable.

from itertools import zip_longest, filterfalse

def batch_iterable(iterable, batch_size=2): 
    args = [iter(iterable)] * batch_size 
    return (tuple(filterfalse(lambda x: x is None, group)) for group in zip_longest(fillvalue=None, *args))

It would work like this:

>>>list(batch_iterable(range(0,5)), 2)
[(0, 1), (2, 3), (4,)]

PS: It would not work if iterable has None values.

Answer 9

This is a very short code snippet I know (not my creation) that does not use len and works under both Python 2 and 3 (not my creation):

def chunks(iterable, size):
    from itertools import chain, islice
    iterator = iter(iterable)
    for first in iterator:
        yield list(chain([first], islice(iterator, size - 1)))