Fun with fancy slicing

[Dave Benjamin]

Hey all,

I just realized you can very easily implement a sequence grouping function
using Python 2.3's fancy slicing support:

def group(values, size):
    return map(None, *[values[i::size] for i in range(size)])
    
>>> group(range(20), 4)
[(0, 1, 2, 3), (4, 5, 6, 7), (8, 9, 10, 11), (12, 13, 14, 15),
(16, 17, 18, 19)]

>>> group(range(14), 3)
[(0, 1, 2), (3, 4, 5), (6, 7, 8), (9, 10, 11), (12, 13, None)]

I had to use map(None, *...) instead of zip(*...) to transpose the result
because zip throws away the "orphans" at the end. Anyway, this is a useful
function to have in your toolkit if you need to do pagination or
multi-column display, among other things...

Anyone have any other interesting applications of the extended slice syntax?

Peace,
Dave

-- 
.:[ dave benjamin (ramenboy) -:- www.ramenfest.com -:- www.3dex.com ]:.
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