NOTE: It was brought to my attention that my last e-mail message arrived completely garbled. Here it is again, as I meant to send it. My Apologies to everyone.

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How about this?

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from itertools import * def fixlen(iterable, len, item=None): ... return islice(chain(iterable, repeat(item)), len) ... list(fixlen([1, 2, 3], 5)) [1, 2, 3, None, None]

I like this. Maybe an addition to itertools?

+1

+1 from me too. Way better than the generator I proposed. Having this as a function also makes it applicable to much more than just one use case. If you see the following code: a,b,c,d = fixlen(str.split(),4) You immediately know it's not a regular unpacking operation; it will be the first place you look if something goes wrong. Vitor