cols and rows

gistfile1.py

from collections import deque
from random import shuffle, randint
from time import time


def t(msg=None, times=[]):
    """ Timing function."""
    t = time()
    if times and msg:
        print msg, t - times[0]
    times.append(t)

PATH = 'row.txt'
GEN_ROWS = 1000000
MAX_LEN = 10
COLS = 5

t()  # start

with open(PATH, 'w') as f:
    f.write('\n'.join(map(str, xrange(GEN_ROWS))))

t('generated rows')

result_columns = [deque(maxlen=MAX_LEN)] * COLS
rows = open(PATH).readlines()

t('loaded rows in memory')

shuffle(rows)

t('shuffled rows')

for row in rows[:MAX_LEN]:
    result_columns[randint(0, len(result_columns) - 1)].append(row.strip())

t('end')  # end

print map(list, result_columns)