Question

Afternoon,

I need to split an array into smaller "chunks".

I am passing over about 1200 items, and need to split these into easier to handle arrays of 100 items each, which I then need to process.

Could anyone please make some suggestions?

Answer 1

You can use LINQ to group all items by the chunk size and create new Arrays afterwards.

// build sample data with 1200 Strings
string[] items = Enumerable.Range(1, 1200).Select(i => "Item" + i).ToArray();
// split on groups with each 100 items
String[][] chunks = items
                    .Select((s, i) => new { Value = s, Index = i })
                    .GroupBy(x => x.Index / 100)
                    .Select(grp => grp.Select(x => x.Value).ToArray())
                    .ToArray();

for (int i = 0; i < chunks.Length; i++)
{
    foreach (var item in chunks[i])
        Console.WriteLine("chunk:{0} {1}", i, item);
}

Note that it’s not necessary to create new arrays(needs cpu cycles and memory). You could also use the IEnumerable<IEnumerable<String>> when you omit the two ToArrays.

Here’s the running code: http://ideone.com/K7Hn2