Python use split with arrays

Question

Is there any equivalent to split for arrays?

a = [1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 5, 3, 4, 5, 8, 4, 3]

separator = [3, 4] (len(separator) can be any)

b = a.split(separator)

b = [[1], [6, 8, 5], [5, 8, 4, 3]]

Answer 1

No, but we could write a function to do such a thing, and then if you need it to be an instance method you could subclass or encapsulate list.

def separate(array,separator):
    results = []
    a = array[:]
    i = 0
    while i<=len(a)-len(separator):
        if a[i:i+len(separator)]==separator:
            results.append(a[:i])
            a = a[i+len(separator):]
            i = 0
        else: i+=1
   results.append(a)
   return results

If you wanted this to work as an instance method, we could do the following to encapsulate the list:

class SplitableList:
    def __init__(self,ar): self.ary = ar
    def split(self,sep): return separate(self.ary,sep)
    # delegate other method calls to self.ary here, for example
    def __len__(self): return len(self.ary)

a = SplitableList([1,3,4,6,8,5,3,4,5,8,4,3])
b = a.split([3,4]) # returns desired result

or we could subclass list like so:

class SplitableList(list):
    def split(self,sep): return separate(self,sep)

a = SplitableList([1,3,4,6,8,5,3,4,5,8,4,3])
b = a.split([3,4]) # returns desired result