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 this without writing my own generator?

Ideally, itertools.cycle(my_list) would have a second argument to limit how many times it cycles... alas, no such luck.

Answer 1

All the other answers are excellent. Another solution would be to use islice. This allows you to interrupt the cycle at any point:

>>> from itertools import islice, cycle
>>> l = [1, 2, 3]
>>> list(islice(cycle(l), len(l) * 3))
[1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3]
>>> list(islice(cycle(l), 7))
[1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1]

Answer 2

import itertools
itertools.chain.from_iterable(itertools.repeat([1, 2, 3], 5))

Itertools is a wonderful library. :)