After seeing yet another person asking how to do this on #python (and having needed to do it in the past myself), I'm wondering why itertools doesn't have a function to break an iterator up into N-sized chunks. Existing possible solutions include both the "clever" but somewhat unreadable... batched_iter = zip(*[iter(input_iter)]*n) ...and the long-form... def batch(input_iter, n): input_iter = iter(input_iter) while True: yield [input_iter.next() for _ in range(n)] There doesn't seem, however, to be one clear "right" way to do this. Every time I come up against this task, I go back to itertools expecting one of the grouping functions there to cover it, but they don't. It seems like it would be a natural fit for itertools, and it would simplify things like processing of file formats that use a consistent number of lines per entry, et cetera. ~Amber