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orenovadia
orenovadia

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Chunked Iterator: Python Riddle

I really like this python riddle. And it is (almost) a practical problem.

Say you have an iterator (stream of objects of unknown length). And you want to separate it to equal size chunks. An example: splitting a file to multiple smaller sized files.

Doing the same with lists is much easier because the length of the list is known:

from typing import List, TypeVar

T = TypeVar('T')


def chunks(l: List[T], n: int) -> List[List[T]]:
    return [l[i:i + n]
            for i in range(0, len(l), n)]


items = list(range(10))
print(chunks(items, 3))
# [[0, 1, 2], [3, 4, 5], [6, 7, 8], [9]]
print(chunks(items, 4))
# [[0, 1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6, 7], [8, 9]]

The riddle is: write chunks where the input is an iterator. And the output is an iterator of iterators


def chunks(l: Iterator[T], n: int) -> Iterator[Iterator[T]]:
    ????

I will add the solution later today or tomorrow.

Extra points for run-time performance

Followup question: What problem can you spot in the solution to this problem?

Enjoy

Edit: Solution is here

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