The docs do make a distinction and generally follow the definitions given in the glossary for the tuturial.
In the case of iter(collection), I prefer the current wording because the target object need not support __iter__, it is sufficient
to supply a sequential __getitem__ method.
Raymond
----- Original Message -----
From: "Calvin Spealman"
I got into a discussion about this, which made me think it would make sense to formalize a distinction between "iterable" and "iterator". To nearly any python developer I talk with, we can define them as:
iterable - An object which can be passed to the built-in iter() function, which returns an iterator.
iterator - An object with a .next() method, which is used to invoke the iteration. An iterator _should_ also be an iterable, and will nearly always return itself as its own iterator.
Now, the current documentation makes no distinction, and we see this in the docstring for iter(), which is curious:
iter(collection) -> iterator
This might indicate that it is using "collection" where I would say "iterable". Also, the same docstring makes mention of something being an iterator _or_ a sequence, so I also should bring up that it may be antiquated, yes?
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