This problem takes its name by arguably the most important event in the life of the ancient historian Josephus: according to his tale, he and his 40 soldiers were trapped in a cave by the Romans during a siege.

Refusing to surrender to the enemy, they instead opted for mass suicide, with a twist: **they formed a circle and proceeded to kill one man every three, until one last man was left (and that it was supposed to kill himself to end the act)**.

Well, Josephus and another man were the last two and, as we now know every detail of the story, you may have correctly guessed that they didn't exactly follow through the original idea.

You are now to create a function that returns a Josephus permutation, taking as parameters the initial *array/list of items* to be permuted as if they were in a circle and counted out every *k* places until none remained.

**Tips and notes:** it helps to start counting from 1 up to n, instead of the usual range 0..n-1; k will always be >=1.

For example, with n=7 and k=3 `josephus(7,3)` should act this way.
```
[1,2,3,4,5,6,7] - initial sequence
[1,2,4,5,6,7] => 3 is counted out and goes into the result [3]
[1,2,4,5,7] => 6 is counted out and goes into the result [3,6]
[1,4,5,7] => 2 is counted out and goes into the result [3,6,2]
[1,4,5] => 7 is counted out and goes into the result [3,6,2,7]
[1,4] => 5 is counted out and goes into the result [3,6,2,7,5]
[4] => 1 is counted out and goes into the result [3,6,2,7,5,1]
[] => 4 is counted out and goes into the result [3,6,2,7,5,1,4]
```
So our final result is:
```
josephus([1,2,3,4,5,6,7],3)==[3,6,2,7,5,1,4]
```
For more info, browse the Josephus Permutation page on wikipedia; related kata: Josephus Survivor.

Also, [live game demo](https://iguacel.github.io/josephus/) by [OmniZoetrope](https://www.codewars.com/users/OmniZoetrope).

```python

USER_FILENAME = "<user_code>"
import sys, json, builtins
import math, heapq, bisect, itertools, functools, collections, statistics, fractions, decimal, operator, array, random, re, string, os, pathlib
try:
    import resource as _res
except Exception:
    _res = None
from collections import Counter, defaultdict, deque, OrderedDict
from functools import lru_cache, reduce
from itertools import accumulate, permutations, combinations, product
from math import gcd, ceil, floor, sqrt
from decimal import Decimal
try:
    from typing import *
except Exception:
    pass
try:
    sys.setrecursionlimit(1_000_000)
except Exception:
    pass
try:
    import site as _site
    try:
        _sys_sites = _site.getsitepackages() if hasattr(_site, "getsitepackages") else []
        for _p in _sys_sites:
            if _p and _p not in sys.path:
                sys.path.append(_p)
    except Exception:
        pass
    try:
        _usp = _site.getusersitepackages()
        if isinstance(_usp, str):
            _usp = [_usp]
        for _p in _usp:
            if _p and _p not in sys.path:
                sys.path.append(_p)
    except Exception:
        pass
except Exception:
    pass

def _disabled_input(*args, **kwargs):
    raise RuntimeError("input() is disabled in callable mode")
builtins.input = _disabled_input

ns = {"__name__": "__judge__"}  # prevent if __name__ == "__main__" blocks
for _k, _v in list(globals().items()):
    if not _k.startswith("_"):
        ns[_k] = _v
_CODE = 'def josephus(items,k):\n  if len(items)==0: return []\n  if len(items)==1: return [items[0]]\n  i = ((k-1)%len(items))\n  return [items[i]] + josephus(items[i+1:]+items[:i], k)\n'
_co = compile(_CODE, USER_FILENAME, "exec")
exec(_co, ns, ns)

_target = None
_fn_name = 'josephus'
if _fn_name:
    if "Solution" in ns:
        try:
            _obj = ns["Solution"]()
            if hasattr(_obj, _fn_name):
                _target = getattr(_obj, _fn_name)
        except Exception:
            _target = None
    if _target is None and _fn_name in ns and callable(ns[_fn_name]):
        _target = ns[_fn_name]
# Fallback: if there's exactly one user-defined function, use it
if _target is None:
    _cands = [v for k, v in ns.items() if callable(v) and getattr(v, "__module__", "") in ("__judge__", "__main__")]
    _user_funcs = [c for c in _cands if getattr(c, "__name__", "").startswith("_") is False]
    if len(_user_funcs) == 1:
        _target = _user_funcs[0]
if _target is None:
    raise RuntimeError(f"Could not resolve callable '{_fn_name}'")

_raw = sys.stdin.read().strip()
if _raw:
    _parsed = json.loads(_raw)
    if isinstance(_parsed, dict):
        _kwargs = _parsed.get("kwargs", {})
        _args = _parsed.get("args", [])
    else:
        _args, _kwargs = _parsed, {}
else:
    _args, _kwargs = [], {}
if not isinstance(_args, (list, tuple)):
    _args = [_args]
_res = _target(*_args, **_kwargs)
try:
    sys.stdout.write(repr(_res) + "\n")
except Exception:
    pass

```

Measured memory_bytes: 8386