[Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info>]
It wasn't :-) but we're talking about adding a function to **itertools** not "container tools", one which will behave subtly different with containers and iterators. Your use-case ("first item in a container") is not the same as the semantics "next element of an iterator", even if we call the second one "first".
All itertools functions accept arbitrary iterables, which includes all iterators of all kinds, and includes everything else `iter()` can be applied to (such as most containers). `first()` would be exactly the same as all other itertools functions in this respect. Yes, you _can_ make mistakes because of it. That gets a yawn from me. It's nothing new, and comes with the territory of Python being a multi-paradigm language. ...
While the meaning of `first()` is clear for any iterable argument.
Sorry Tim, I have to disagree. The meaning of `first` is:
return the first element of a sequence or container (in standard iteration order), OR the *next* element of an iterator
As I said, the meaning _is_ clear to you.
and I don't think that this is even a little bit clear from the name.
I didn't claim it was clear from the name alone. As always, what I care about is whether the name is sufficient to remind users of the meaning _after_ they've learned what it means. For a non-empty iterable `it`, a = first(it) is the same as: for a in it: break Once that's grasped, it's essentially impossible to forget what `first()` means (it's simply the first value returned from iterating over `it`).