遗憾的是，我不认为使用itertools.groupby()是明智的。要安全使用它太难了，而且只需要几行代码就可以写出一些可以按照预期工作的东西。

def my_group_by(iterable, keyfunc):
    """Because itertools.groupby is tricky to use

    The stdlib method requires sorting in advance, and returns iterators not
    lists, and those iterators get consumed as you try to use them, throwing
    everything off if you try to look at something more than once.
    """
    ret = defaultdict(list)
    for k in iterable:
        ret[keyfunc(k)].append(k)
    return dict(ret)

像这样使用它:

def first_letter(x):
    return x[0]

my_group_by('four score and seven years ago'.split(), first_letter)

得到

{'f': ['four'], 's': ['score', 'seven'], 'a': ['and', 'ago'], 'y': ['years']}

from random import randint
from itertools import groupby

 l = [randint(1, 3) for _ in range(20)]

 d = {}
 for k, g in groupby(l, lambda x: x):
     if not d.get(k, None):
         d[k] = list(g)
     else:
         d[k] = d[k] + list(g)

上面的代码展示了如何使用groupby根据提供的lambda函数/键对列表进行分组。唯一的问题是输出没有合并，这可以使用字典轻松解决。

例子:

l = [2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 3, 2, 1, 3, 3, 1, 3, 2, 3, 1, 2, 1, 3, 2, 3]

应用groupby后，结果将是:

for k, g in groupby(l, lambda x:x):
    print(k, list(g))

2 [2]
1 [1]
2 [2]
3 [3]
1 [1]
3 [3]
2 [2]
1 [1]
3 [3, 3]
1 [1]
3 [3]
2 [2]
3 [3]
1 [1]
2 [2]
1 [1]
3 [3]
2 [2]
3 [3]

一旦字典被使用如下所示的结果可以很容易地迭代:

{2: [2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], 1: [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1], 3: [3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3]}

我想再举一个例子，说明没有排序的groupby是行不通的。改编自James Sulak的例子

from itertools import groupby

things = [("vehicle", "bear"), ("animal", "duck"), ("animal", "cactus"), ("vehicle", "speed boat"), ("vehicle", "school bus")]

for key, group in groupby(things, lambda x: x[0]):
    for thing in group:
        print "A %s is a %s." % (thing[1], key)
    print " "

输出是

A bear is a vehicle.

A duck is a animal.
A cactus is a animal.

A speed boat is a vehicle.
A school bus is a vehicle.

有两组有车辆，而我们只能期待一组

警告:

语法列表(groupby(…))不会按您想要的方式工作。它似乎破坏了内部迭代器对象，所以使用

for x in list(groupby(range(10))):
    print(list(x[1]))

会产生:

[]
[]
[]
[]
[]
[]
[]
[]
[]
[9]

而不是list(groupby(…))，尝试[(k, list(g)) for k,g in groupby(…)]，或者如果你经常使用这种语法，

def groupbylist(*args, **kwargs):
    return [(k, list(g)) for k, g in groupby(*args, **kwargs)]

并且可以访问groupby功能，同时避免那些讨厌的(对于小数据)迭代器。

我遇到的一个有用的例子可能会有帮助:

from itertools import groupby

#user input

myinput = input()

#creating empty list to store output

myoutput = []

for k,g in groupby(myinput):

    myoutput.append((len(list(g)),int(k)))

print(*myoutput)

示例输入:14445221

样本输出:(1,1)(3,4)(1,5)(2,2)(1,1)

使用itertools的关键是要认识到。Groupby是指只有在可迭代对象中是顺序的项才会被分组在一起。这就是排序工作的原因，因为基本上你在重新排列集合，以便所有满足callback(item)的项现在都按顺序出现在排序的集合中。

也就是说，您不需要对列表进行排序，只需要一个键-值对的集合，其中的值可以根据groupby生成的每个group iterable增长。例如，列表字典。

>>> things = [("vehicle", "bear"), ("animal", "duck"), ("animal", "cactus"), ("vehicle", "speed boat"), ("vehicle", "school bus")]
>>> coll = {}
>>> for k, g in itertools.groupby(things, lambda x: x[0]):
...     coll.setdefault(k, []).extend(i for _, i in g)
...
{'vehicle': ['bear', 'speed boat', 'school bus'], 'animal': ['duck', 'cactus']}