[Python-Dev] Termination of two-arg iter()

[Oren Tirosh]

On Sat, Jul 13, 2002 at 07:07:36PM -0400, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> Actually, not.  Under "Resolved Issues" the PEP has this:
> 
>     - Once a particular iterator object has raised StopIteration, will
>       it also raise StopIteration on all subsequent next() calls?
>       Some say that it would be useful to require this, others say
>       that it is useful to leave this open to individual iterators.

At the time this was discussed on the list has anyone considered the
possibility of raising an exception?  Something like 'IteratorExhausted'?

If the current definition is ruled to be 'undefined' then an iterator MAY
raise an exception in this case.  

Iterable objects can often serve as a replacement for lists in many places 
and even passed successfully to a lot of old code that was written before 
the iteration protocol. But an iterable object is not always a suitable 
replacement for a sequence when the code needs to iterate multiple times and 
the object is not re-iterable.  This will fail in a very nonobvious way 
without raising an exception because an exhausted iterator looks just like 
an empty sequence to a for loop.  

I think this kind of errors should not pass silently.

Yes, I have been bitten by this. Perhaps this was a result of overzealous 
use of iterators because I was so excited with them, but it's a real 
problem, not some contrived example.

	Oren