Split list into multiple lists with fixed number of elements

Question

How to split a List of elements into lists with at most N items?

ex: Given a list with 7 elements, create groups of 4, leaving the last group possibly with less elem

Answer 1

I am adding a tail recursive version of the split method since there was some discussion of tail-recursion versus recursion. I have used the tailrec annotation to force the compiler to complain in case the implementation is not indeed tail-recusive. Tail-recursion I believe turns into a loop under the hood and thus will not cause problems even for a large list as the stack will not grow indefinitely.

import scala.annotation.tailrec


object ListSplitter {

  def split[A](xs: List[A], n: Int): List[List[A]] = {
    @tailrec
    def splitInner[A](res: List[List[A]], lst: List[A], n: Int) : List[List[A]] = {
      if(lst.isEmpty) res
      else {
        val headList: List[A] = lst.take(n)
        val tailList : List[A]= lst.drop(n)
        splitInner(headList :: res, tailList, n)
      }
    }

    splitInner(Nil, xs, n).reverse
  }

}

object ListSplitterTest extends App {
  val res = ListSplitter.split(List(1,2,3,4,5,6,7), 2)
  println(res)
}