How to iterate the input over a particular size?

[Shawn Milochik]

A couple of notes:

Your code is too packed together. That makes it hard to read. Put in some whitespace (and comments, where necessary), and put spaces around your equal signs (x = 23 instead of x=23).

That said, here's something I threw together:

#!/usr/bin/env python

def chop_list(words, size = 9):

    """
    Take a list, returning values
    from the end of the list, and
    the original list minus those values.

    >>> chop_list(['test', 'with', 'four', 'words'], 2)
    (['test', 'with'], ['four', 'words'])

    >>> chop_list(['test', 'with', 'four', 'words'], 3)
    (['test'], ['with', 'four', 'words'])

    >>> chop_list(['test', 'with', 'four', 'words'], 4)
    ([], ['test', 'with', 'four', 'words'])


    """

    chopped = words[-size:]
    old_to_return = len(words) - len(chopped)

    return words[:old_to_return], chopped


if __name__ == '__main__':

    import doctest
    doctest.testmod()

    sample_string = '''There are more than nine words here. 
    I know because I wrote them.'''

    word_list = sample_string.split()

    while word_list:

        word_list, new = chop_list(word_list)
        print "Pulled off:\t%s\n\tRemaining: %s" % (new, word_list)