[Python-Dev] [Python-ideas] itertools.chunks(iterable, size, fill=None) (original) (raw)

anatoly techtonik techtonik at gmail.com
Thu Jul 5 15:47:53 CEST 2012

On Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 3:01 PM, Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml at behnel.de> wrote:

To address the main problem of users not finding what they need, what about simply extending the docstring of the grouper() function with a sentence like this: "This functionality is also called 'chunking' or 'blocking' and can be used for load distribution and sharding." That would make it easy for users to find what they are looking for when they search the page for "chunk". I find that a much more common and less ambiguous name than "grouping", which reminds me more of "group by".

In appeared that "chunking" and "grouping" are different kind of tasks. You can chunk a sequence (sting) by slicing it into smaller sequences, but you can not chunk in iterable - you can only group it.

There is an data loss about the structure that occurs when a sequence (string) becomes an iterator: chunks ABCDE -> AB CD E group ABCDE -> A B C D E -> (A B) (C D) (D E)

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