Given that we have this kind of arcane discussion fairly regularly (not
just in this thread), and it always makes my head spin, and it seems I'm
not the only one who gets confused:
How about having a module that provides functions such as
isgenerator isiterator isiterable etc.
or alternatively one function that would return a tuple/list of
categories that an object fell into e.g. ('iterator', 'iterable')
or a dictionary e.g. { 'iterator' : True,
'iterable' : True, 'generator' : False }.
(Bikeshed as appropriate, but providing a dict seems to make it easier
to add more things in future without breaking backward compatibility.)
Then those of us who are prepared to take care to be precise in our
language but could do with some help could use it to clarify our
thoughts. And there should be less noise in the newsgroups from
pointless arguments about precisely what is what. And I suspect it
would even have uses in "real" code.
Rob Cliffe
On 28/11/2017 06:22, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 03:11:25PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
Steven D'Aprano writes:
> The subset of iterators which are created as generators are *also*
> called generators,
As long as we're being precise, I don't think that is precisely correct:
>>> (x for x in range(1))
<generator object <genexpr> at 0x10dee5e08>
>>> iter(range(1))
<range_iterator object at 0x10dab83f0>
>>> iter((1,))
<tuple_iterator object at 0x10df109b0>
The two iterators have the same duck-type, the generator is different.
How is the generator different? It quacks like a range_iterator and
tuple_iterator, it swims like them, it flies like them. Is there some
iterator method or protocol that generators don't support?
A generator (object) is, of course, an interable.
And also an iterator:
py> collections.abc
py> isinstance((x+1 for x in range(5)), collections.abc.Iterator)
True
> Most of the time the distinction doesn't actually matter, since you
> cannot (easily?) create a generator without first creating a
> generator function.
At least you can create a generator (object) with the generator
function created and called implicitly by using a generator
expression.
Ah yes, I forget about generator expressions, thanks.
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