for each loop pyton - nested loop

lyrics = ["I want to break free", "I want to break free",
          "I want to break free", "yes, I want to break free"]
number_of_lines = 6

I am trying to create a loop that prints as many lines as many number_of_lines. In this specific example I basically need to loop IN lyrics 1.5 times to print the whole list (4 lines) and then the first 2 again to get to 6 = number of lines. How do you do it exactly?

thanks much in advance

for line in lyrics:
   print(line)

Use itertools.cycle to repeat the contents of the list as often as necessary to obtain the desired number of lines (using itertools.islice):

from itertools import cycle, islice


lyrics = ["I want to break free", "I want to break free",
          "I want to break free", "yes, I want to break free"]
number_of_lines = 6

for line in islice(cycle(lyrics), 6):
    print(line)

This incurs some additional memory overhead, though. cycle has to cache the values it reads from its iterator in order to repeat them. Just something to keep in mind when using cycle and large lists, but typically the lists will be small.

The issue is that cycle iterates over an iterator it obtains from its iterable argument, and the list behind the iterator could change between calls to next. For example,

>>> from itertools import cycle
>>> x = [1,2,3]
>>> i = cycle(x)
>>> next(i)
1
>>> next(i)
2
>>> x.clear()
>>> next(i)  # Not 3
1
>>> next(i)
2
>>> next(i)
1

You could use the modulo operator as follows:

lyrics = ["I want to break free", "I want to break free", "I want to break free", "yes, I want to break free"]
number_of_lines = 6

for i in range(number_of_lines):
    print(lyrics[i%len(lyrics)])

Output:

I want to break free
I want to break free
I want to break free
yes, I want to break free
I want to break free
I want to break free

Another option (maybe a bit more "Pythonic" as using the modulo operator) is to use the cycle() method available in the with Python coming itertools module as follows:

lyrics = ["I want to break free", "I want to break free", "I want to break free", "yes, I want to break free"]
number_of_lines = 6

from itertools import cycle
line_in_lyrics_cycle = cycle(lyrics)

for _ in range(number_of_lines):
   print( next(line_in_lyrics_cycle) )

And because line_in_lyrics_cycle is an iterator you get a line out of it using the Python next() method and don't need the index value provided in the loop by range(). A nice side-effect here is that because of use of next() you can read the code like you would read the explanation what it does.

For the sake of completeness here the code proposed by Kelly Bundy in comments to the other itertools using answer by chepner:

from itertools import islice, chain, repeat
q, r = divmod(number_of_lines, len(lyrics))
fulls = chain.from_iterable(repeat(lyrics, q))
tail = islice(lyrics, r)
for line in chain(fulls, tail):
    print(line)

which does expressed in terms of Python list only:

q, r = divmod(number_of_lines, len(lyrics))
lyrics_total = q*lyrics+lyrics[0:r]
for line in lyrics_total:
    print(line)

Looking especially at the first version of the code making full use of the itertools iterators the entire BEAUTY of

   print( next(line_in_lyrics_cycle) )

is gone, buried so deep under the really hard to understand code, that you need probably three times the lines of text to explain what, how and why just this code.

In this context the code provided by Pingu needs much less explanations, because you only have to understand how the modulo % operator works and must not worry about divmod and/or itertools.

It excels because of its shortness got down to the bare point of cycling which the modulo operator is all about:

for i in range(number_of_lines):
    print(lyrics[i%len(lyrics)])