[Python-Dev] accumulator display syntax

[Guido van Rossum]

[Skip]
> > Here's an alternate suggestion.  Instead of inventing new syntax,
> > why not change the semantics of list comprehensions to be lazy?
> > They haven't been in use that long, and while they are popular,
> > the semantic tweakage would probably cause minimal disruption.  In
> > situations where laziness wasn't wanted, the most that a
> > particular use would have to change (I think) is to pass it to
> > list().

Sorry, too late.  You're hugely underestimating the backwards
compatibility issues.  And they have been in use at least since 2000
(they were introduced in 2.0).

[Alex]
> I think we should keep the user-observable semantics as now, BUT
> maybe an optimization IS possible if all the user code does with the
> LC is loop on it (or anyway just get its iter(...) and nothing else).

But that's not very common, so I don't see the point of putting in the
effort, plus it's not safe.  Using a LC as the sequence of a for loop
is ugly, and usually

  for x in [y for y in S if P(y)]: ...

means the same as

  for x in S:
      if P(x): ...

except when it doesn't, and then making the list comprehension lazy
can be a mistake: the following example

  for key in [k for k in d if d[k] is None]:
       del d[key]

is *not* the same as

  for key in d:
      if d[key] is None:
          del d

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)