12 Jul
2002
12 Jul
'02
3:46 p.m.
I have just submitted a patch that makes a file into an iterator (i.e. adds a .next method to files). With this change all Python objects that have an __iter__ method and no next method produce iterators that do not modify the container. Another possibility would be to make file iterators that use seek or re-open the file to avoid modifying the file position of the parent file object. I don't think that would be a good idea because files can be devices, pipes or sockets which are not seekable.
Cute trick, but I think it's too fragile. You don't know about 3rd party iterables that have the same problem as file. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)