On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 7:23 PM Stephen J. Turnbull <turnbull.stephen...@u.tsukuba.ac.jp> wrote: > > Chris Angelico writes: > > > > (Technical note: for the convenience of implementors of 'for', > > > when iter is applied to an iterator, it always returns the > > > iterator itself.) > > > > That's not a mere technical detail - that's actually part of the > > definition of an iterator, namely that iter(x) is x. That's how you > > can tell that it's an iterator. > > From the point of view of teaching iterators to novices, I think it > *is* a technical detail. As has been pointed out, there are languages > where iterators are *never* iterable. What's *necessary* to an > iterator as a concept is that it have a __next__. Python chooses to > define the iterator protocol with __iter__ being the identity for > iterators because it makes implementing *for* straightforward.
Fair enough. Doesn't make a lot of difference, though. > > I don't like this term "converted". > > I refuse to die on that hill. :-) Suggest a better term, I'll happily > use it until something even better comes along. Or I'll try to come > up with a better one as I think about the documentation issue. > Unfortunately I don't have a really good generic term, but I would be inclined to "get an iterator from" an object rather than "convert" it to an iterator. It's still not a great term, but at least it allows you to think about getting multiple iterators from the same thing, even potentially getting different types of iterator. ChrisA _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/OP5P75BGGYYNX4JNWY6YOCDMH3XZTBD7/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
