Imagine I have an JS array like this:
var a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11];
What I want is to split that array into N smaller arrays. For instance:
split_list_in_n(a, 2)
[[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9, 10, 11]]
For N = 3:
[[1, 2, 3, 4], [5, 6, 7, 8], [9, 10, 11]]
For N = 4:
[[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9], [10, 11]]
For N = 5:
[[1, 2, 3], [4, 5], [6, 7], [8, 9], [10, 11]]
For Python, I have this:
def split_list_in_n(l, cols):
""" Split up a list in n lists evenly size chuncks """
start = 0
for i in xrange(cols):
stop = start + len(l[i::cols])
yield l[start:stop]
start = stop
For JS, the best right solution that I could come up with is a recursive function, but I don't like it because it's complicated and ugly. This inner function returns an array like this [1, 2, 3, null, 4, 5, 6, null, 7, 8], and then I have to loop it again and split it manually. (My first attempt was returning this: [1, 2, 3, [4, 5, 6, [7, 8, 9]]], and I decided to do it with the null separator).
function split(array, cols) {
if (cols==1) return array;
var size = Math.ceil(array.length / cols);
return array.slice(0, size).concat([null]).concat(split(array.slice(size), cols-1));
}
Here's a jsfiddle of that: http://jsfiddle.net/uduhH/
How would you do that? Thanks!
You can make the slices "balanced" (subarrays' lengths differ as less as possible) or "even" (all subarrays but the last have the same length):
function chunkify(a, n, balanced) {
if (n < 2)
return [a];
var len = a.length,
out = [],
i = 0,
size;
if (len % n === 0) {
size = Math.floor(len / n);
while (i < len) {
out.push(a.slice(i, i += size));
}
}
else if (balanced) {
while (i < len) {
size = Math.ceil((len - i) / n--);
out.push(a.slice(i, i += size));
}
}
else {
n--;
size = Math.floor(len / n);
if (len % size === 0)
size--;
while (i < size * n) {
out.push(a.slice(i, i += size));
}
out.push(a.slice(size * n));
}
return out;
}
///////////////////////
onload = function () {
function $(x) {
return document.getElementById(x);
}
function calc() {
var s = +$('s').value, a = [];
while (s--)
a.unshift(s);
var n = +$('n').value;
$('b').textContent = JSON.stringify(chunkify(a, n, true))
$('e').textContent = JSON.stringify(chunkify(a, n, false))
}
$('s').addEventListener('input', calc);
$('n').addEventListener('input', calc);
calc();
}
<p>slice <input type="number" value="20" id="s"> items into
<input type="number" value="6" id="n"> chunks:</p>
<pre id="b"></pre>
<pre id="e"></pre>