Insert element in Python list after every nth element

Question

Say I have a Python list like this:

letters = [\'a\',\'b\',\'c\',\'d\',\'e\',\'f\',\'g\',\'h\',\'i\',\'j\']

I want to insert an \'x\' after

Answer 1

A pretty straightforward method:

>>> letters = ['a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j']
>>> new_list = []
>>> n = 3
>>> for start_index in range(0, len(letters), n):
...     new_list.extend(letters[start_index:start_index+n])
...     new_list.append('x')
... 
>>> new_list.pop()
'x'
>>> new_list
['a', 'b', 'c', 'x', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'x', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'x', 'j']

You can also use the grouper recipe from the itertools documentation for the chunking.