Chunkifier

chunk.py

#!/bin/env python
# $ seq 50 | python chunk.py 5 "xargs echo '-> '"
# ->  1 2 3 4 5
# ->  6 7 8 9 10
# ->  11 12 13 14 15
# ->  16 17 18 19 20
# ->  21 22 23 24 25
# ->  26 27 28 29 30
# ->  31 32 33 34 35
# ->  36 37 38 39 40
# ->  41 42 43 44 45
# ->  46 47 48 49 50

import sys
import subprocess

maxsize = int(sys.argv[1])
cmd = " ".join(sys.argv[2:])
data = []
while True:
    try:
        line = raw_input()
    except EOFError:
        break
    data.append(line.strip())
    if len(data) == maxsize:
        fd = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdin=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
        fd.stdin.write("\n".join(data))
        fd.communicate()
        fd.wait()
        data = []