Title: Break A List Into N-Sized Chunks
Slug: break_list_into_chunks_of_equal_size
Summary: Break A List Into N-Sized Chunks
Date: 2016-03-07 12:00
Category: Python
Tags: Data Wrangling
Authors: Chris Albon

In this snippet we take a list and break it up into n-size chunks. This is a very common practice when dealing with APIs that have a maximum request size.

Credit for this nifty function goes to Ned Batchelder who posted it on StackOverflow.



In [1]:

    
# Create a list of first names
first_names = ['Steve', 'Jane', 'Sara', 'Mary','Jack','Bob', 'Bily', 'Boni', 'Chris','Sori', 'Will', 'Won','Li']



In [2]:

    
# Create a function called "chunks" with two arguments, l and n:
def chunks(l, n):
    # For item i in a range that is a length of l,
    for i in range(0, len(l), n):
        # Create an index range for l of n items:
        yield l[i:i+n]



In [5]:

    
# Create a list that from the results of the function chunks:
list(chunks(first_names, 5))









    Out[5]:





[['Steve', 'Jane', 'Sara', 'Mary', 'Jack'],
 ['Bob', 'Bily', 'Boni', 'Chris', 'Sori'],
 ['Will', 'Won', 'Li']]