last updated 2 years ago by gerard #

COMMENT: This is part of a suggested restructuring of the Tutorial. Use the sidebar links to return to the current tutorial.

1. Intro
2. Names and Scopes
3. Classes
4. Exceptions
5. List Comprehensions
6. Iterators
7. A Tour of the Standard Library - Part 1
8. A Tour of the Standard Library - Part 2
9. Unit Testing
10. Timing and Debugging
11. Regular Expressions
12. XML
13. cgi

Iterators

By now you have probably noticed that most container objects can be looped over using a for statement:

for element in [1, 2, 3]:
    print element
for element in (1, 2, 3):
    print element
for key in {'one':1, 'two':2}:
    print key
for char in "123":
    print char
for line in open("myfile.txt"):
    print line

This style of access is clear, concise, and convenient. The use of iterators pervades and unifies Python. Behind the scenes, the for statement calls iter() on the container object. The function returns an iterator object that defines the method next() which accesses elements in the container one at a time. When there are no more elements, next() raises a StopIteration exception which tells the for loop to terminate. This example shows how it all works:

>>> s = 'abc'
>>> it = iter(s)
>>> it
<iterator object at 0x00A1DB50>
>>> it.next()
'a'
>>> it.next()
'b'
>>> it.next()
'c'
>>> it.next()

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
    it.next()
StopIteration

Having seen the mechanics behind the iterator protocol, it is easy to add iterator behavior to your classes. Define a iter() method which returns an object with a next() method. If the class defines next(), then iter() can just return self:

class Reverse(object):
    "Iterator for looping over a sequence backwards"
    def __init__(self, data):
        self.data = data
        self.index = len(data)
    def __iter__(self):
        return self
    def next(self):
        if self.index == 0:
            raise StopIteration
        self.index = self.index - 1
        return self.data[self.index]

>>> for char in Reverse('spam'):
...     print char
...
m
a
p
s

Generators

Generators are a simple and powerful tool for creating iterators. They are written like regular functions but use the yield statement whenever they want to return data. Each time next() is called, the generator resumes where it left-off (it remembers all the data values and which statement was last executed). An example shows that generators can be trivially easy to create:

def reverse(data):
    for index in range(len(data)-1, -1, -1):
        yield data[index]

>>> for char in reverse('golf'):
...     print char
...
f
l
o
g

Anything that can be done with generators can also be done with class based iterators as described in the previous section. What makes generators so compact is that the iter() and next() methods are created automatically.

Another key feature is that the local variables and execution state are automatically saved between calls. This made the function easier to write and much more clear than an approach using instance variables like self.index and self.data.

In addition to automatic method creation and saving program state, when generators terminate, they automatically raise StopIteration. In combination, these features make it easy to create iterators with no more effort than writing a regular function.

Generator Expressions

Some simple generators can be coded succinctly as expressions using a syntax similar to list comprehensions but with parentheses instead of brackets. These expressions are designed for situations where the generator is used right away by an enclosing function. Generator expressions are more compact but less versatile than full generator definitions and tend to be more memory friendly than equivalent list comprehensions.

Examples:

>>> sum(i*i for i in range(10))                 # sum of squares
285

>>> xvec = [10, 20, 30]
>>> yvec = [7, 5, 3]
>>> sum(x*y for x,y in zip(xvec, yvec))         # dot product
260

>>> from math import pi, sin
>>> sine_table = dict((x, sin(x*pi/180)) for x in range(0, 91))

>>> unique_words = set(word  for line in page  for word in line.split())

>>> valedictorian = max((student.gpa, student.name) for student in graduates)

>>> data = 'golf'
>>> list(data[i] for i in range(len(data)-1,-1,-1))
['f', 'l', 'o', 'g']

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