
[Greg Ewing]
pinard@iro.umontreal.ca:
could we have the guarantee that if an iterable returns an iterator through the iterable's __iter__, the iterator's __iter__ method will never be called from looping over the iterable?
[...pause while Greg's brain parses that sentence...]
(Sorry for my bad English.)
Yes, I believe that's true.
If yes, then, the Library Reference is misleading, at the page: http://www.python.org/dev/doc/devel/lib/typeiter.html when it strongly says that any iterator's __iter__ method is "required". I guess this is a possible source of confusion. The context does not make it clear that the iterator's __iter__ method is *only* required whenever one *also* wants to use an iterator as an iterable. Better would be to describe __iter__ only once, the first time through, saying everything there that has to be said, and only retain for iterators the requirement of having a `next()' method. We should describe the truth. P.S. - Also, I do not understand the tiny bit about the `in' statement in the above page. Has `in' ever been a statement? If it refers to the comparison operator `in', then has it any special properties when used with iterators? I'm unsuccessful at seeing any hint about this from the documentation: http://www.python.org/dev/doc/devel/ref/comparisons.html -- François Pinard http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard