[Python-ideas] Introduce collections.Reiterable

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 10:58:40AM +0200, Georg Brandl wrote:

> > 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.

I'm not inventing new terminology. I'm using the plain English meanings 
of "directly" and "indirectly", and the standard meaning of "iterate", 
"iterator", "iterable" as used by Python and described in the glossary.

As the glossary says, "The for statement [calls iter] for you, creating 
a TEMPORARY UNNAMED VARIABLE to hold the iterator for the duration of 
the loop." [emphasis added] All I am doing is distinguishing between the 
iterable object that the for-loop calls iter() on, which need not have a 
__next__ method, and the iterable object that the for-loop calls 
__next__ on. They're not always the same object.

But as I've already said, the distinction usually doesn't matter. I've 
already forgotten the context of why I thought it mattered when I first 
raised it *wink*



-- 
Steven