How would I unpack a flat list? [duplicate]

Answer 1

Perhaps use an iterator and increment the iterator when you want the next element in the chunk:

data = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
it = iter(data)

for x in it:
    a = x
    b = next(it)
    c = next(it)
    print(a, b, c)
    # Do something with a, b, and c

Answer 2

Here's a hacky solution with iter and zip:

i =  [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
d = iter(i)

for a, b, c in zip(*[d]*3):
    print(a, b, c)

Output:

1 2 3
4 5 6

Additionally if you want it to iterate over everything when your original list isn't divisible by three you can use zip_longest from itertools:

from itertools import zip_longest


i =  [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
d = iter(i)

for a, b, c in zip_longest(*[d]*3):
  print(a, b, c)

Output:

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 None None