[Python-ideas] Introduce collections.Reiterable

Georg Brandl g.brandl at gmx.net
Sun Sep 22 10:58:40 CEST 2013


On 09/22/2013 06:56 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
> On 20 Sep 2013 19:49, "Steven D'Aprano" <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 11:02:57PM +1000, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>> > On 19 September 2013 22:18, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
>> [...]
>> > > At the moment, dict views aren't directly iterable (you can't call
>> > > next() on them). But in principle they could have been designed as
>> > > re-iterable iterators.
>> >
>> > That's not what iterable means. The iterable/iterator distinction is
>> > well defined and reflected in the collections ABCs:
>>
>> Actually, I think the collections ABC gets it wrong, according to both
>> common practice and the definition given in the glossary:
>>
>> http://docs.python.org/3.4/glossary.html
>>
>> More on this below.
>>
>> As for my comment above, dict views don't obey the iterator protocol
>> themselves, as they have no __next__ method, nor do they obey the
>> sequence protocol, as they are not indexable. Hence they are not
>> *directly* iterable, but they are *indirectly* iterable, since they have
>> an __iter__ method which returns an iterator.
> 
> Um, no. Everywhere Python iterates over anything, we call iter(obj)
> first. If there is anywhere we don't do that, it's a bug.
> 
>> I don't think this is a critical distinction. I think it is fine to call
>> views "iterable", since they can be iterated over. On the rare occasion
>> that it matters, we can just do what I did above, and talk about objects
>> which are directly iterable (e.g. iterators, sequences, generator
>> objects) and those which are indirectly iterable (e.g. dict views).
> 
> Or you could just use the existing terminology and talk about
> iterables vs iterators instead of inventing your own terms.

Ack. Please don't create new terms, rather suggest an improvement to the
glossary definition if you think it's inadequate.

Georg



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