Is there an elegant way to cycle through a list N times via iteration (like itertools.cycle but limit the cycles)?

Question

I\'d like to cycle through a list repeatedly (N times) via an iterator, so as not to actually store N copies of the list in memory. Is there a built-in or elegant way to do

Answer 1

@Darthfett's answer is documented as an itertools recipes:

from itertools import chain, repeat

def ncycles(iterable, n):
    "Returns the sequence elements n times"
    return chain.from_iterable(repeat(tuple(iterable), n))


list(ncycles(["a", "b"], 3))
# ['a', 'b', 'a', 'b', 'a', 'b']

For convenience, I add that the more_itertools library implements this recipe (and many others) for you:

import more_itertools as mit

list(mit.ncycles(["a", "b"], 3))
# ['a', 'b', 'a', 'b', 'a', 'b']