Note: I am all for not enforcing anything here -- let's keep duck typing
alive!

If static type checkers want to be more pedantic, they can be -- that's
kinda what they are for :-)

But the OP wrote:

"""
 "[i]terators are required to have an __iter__()
<https://docs.python.org/3/reference/datamodel.html#object.__iter__> method"
which neither `for` nor `iter()` actually enforce.
"""

I'm confused -- as far as I can tell `for` does enforce this -- well, it
doesn't enforce it, but it does require it, which is the same thing, yes?
But does it need to?

On Wed, Sep 15, 2021 at 4:07 PM Guido van Rossum <gu...@python.org> wrote:

> Reminder about how for-loops work:
>
> This:
>
> for x in seq:
>     <body>
>
> translates (roughly) to this:
>
> _it = iter(seq)
> while True:
>     try:
>         x = next(_it)
>     except StopIteration:
>         break
>     <body>
>

exactly -- that call to iter is always made, yes?

The "trick" here is that we want it to be easy to use a for loop with
either an iterable or an iterator. Otherwise, we would require people to
write:

for i in iter(a_sequence):
    ...

which I doubt anyone would want, backward compatibility aside.

And since iter() is going to always get called, we need __iter__ methods
that return self.

However, I suppose one could do a for loop something like this instead.

_it = seq
while True:
    try:
        x = next(_it)
    except TypeError:
        _it = iter(_it)
        x = next(_it)
    except StopIteration:
        break
    <body>

That is, instead of making every iterator an iterable, keep the two
concepts more distinct:

An "Iterator" has a __next__ method that returns an item or raises
StopIteration.

An "Iterable" has an __iter__ method that returns an iterator.

That would mean that one couldn't write a single class that is both an
iterable and an iterator, and uses (abuses) __iter__ to reset itself. But
would that be a bad thing?

Anyway, this is just a mental exercise, I am not suggesting changing
anything.

-CHB

-- 

Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer

Emergency Response Division
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chris.bar...@noaa.gov
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