Brendan Barnwell wrote:
That's an interesting analysis, but I don't think your view is really the right one. It *is* unpacking a suitcase, it's just that *if necessary* the suitcase is constructed just in time for you to unpack it.
I don't think that's right. An iterator created from a sequence is not a container in its own right, it's something that provides access to a container. It's not a suitcase, it's a view of the contents of a suitcase.
If you expect your suitcase to remain unopened, it's pretty cold comfort to find that someone has opened it and taken only your pants and shoes but left the rest.
So you think it's somehow better if he takes *all* of your clothes instead? Here's another way to think about it. If it's acceptable to exhaust the iterator when only the first few items are requested, then you're planning to throw the iterator away afterwards. In that case, what purpose is served by extracting the rest of the items? Remember, the ellipsis explicitly says you don't care how many more items there are. The only reason I can think of is if you're relying on side effects performed by the iterator, which is a pretty obscure way to design code. If the iterator really must be exhausted for some reason, it would be better to be explicit about it, e.g. a, b, ... = spam_iterator for _ in spam_iterator: pass # Mustn't leave any spam in the fridge or it will go bad -- Greg