grouper is a simple application that randomly places items in groups of size N. For example, teachers can use grouper to randomly create groups for student projects. The required input is a plain text file. grouper reads each row as one "item". grouper creates a CSV file where each row is a list of items that belong to a group.

Example:

Cale-Daviss-iMac:grouper daviscale$ grouper.py -h Usage: grouper.py [options] list_of_groups_file

Options: -h, --help show this help message and exit -v, --verbose Print the groups to standard output -s GROUP_SIZE, --group-size=GROUP_SIZE Select the size of the groups. Default is 2. -f OUTPUT_FILE_NAME, --output-file-name=OUTPUT_FILE_NAME Select a name for the output CSV file. If omitted, the output file name is the input file name appended with "_groups.csv".

Cale-Daviss-iMac:grouper daviscale$ head test/group_list_test.txt A B C D E F G H I J

Cale-Daviss-iMac:grouper daviscale$ grouper.py -v -s4 -f test/test_output.txt test/group_list_test.txt 5,Z,I,9 T,K,8,12 H,D,W,11 N,S,U,M R,Q,A,Y G,V,6,3 F,B,C,1 L,2,10,P X,13,O,J E,4,7

Cale-Daviss-iMac:grouper daviscale$ cat test/test_output.txt 5,Z,I,9 T,K,8,12 H,D,W,11 N,S,U,M R,Q,A,Y G,V,6,3 F,B,C,1 L,2,10,P X,13,O,J E,4,7

The last row of output is a group of three because grouper cannot create a group of 4 with the items that remain.