[Python-ideas] Consider making enumerate a sequence if its argument is a sequence

Andrew Barnert abarnert at yahoo.com
Wed Sep 30 20:16:33 CEST 2015


On Sep 30, 2015, at 10:47, Chris Barker <chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 10:33 AM, Serhiy Storchaka <storchaka at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 30.09.15 20:18, Neil Girdhar wrote:
>>> Ah good point.  Well, in the case of a sequence argument, an enumerate
>>> object could be both a sequence and an iterator.
>> 
>> It can't be.
>> 
>> For sequence:
>> 
>> >>> x = 'abcd'
>> >>> list(zip(x, x))
>> [('a', 'a'), ('b', 'b'), ('c', 'c'), ('d', 'd')]
>> 
>> For iterator:
>> 
>> >>> x = iter('abcd')
>> >>> list(zip(x, x))
>> [('a', 'b'), ('c', 'd')]
> 
> well, that's because zip is using the same iterator it two places. would that ever be the case with enumerate?

The point is that _nothing_ can be an iterator and a sequence at the same time. (And therefore, an enumerate object can't be both at the same time.)

The zip function is just a handy way of demonstrating the problem; it's not the actual problem. You could also demonstrate it by, e.g., calling len(x), next(x), list(x): If x is an iterator, next(x) will use up the 'a' so list will only give you ['b', 'c', 'd'], even though len gave you 4.

Conceptually: iterators are inherently one-shot iterables; sequences are inherently reusable iterables. While there's no explicit rule that __iter__ can't return self for a sequence, there's no reasonable way to make a sequence that does so. Which means no sequence can be an iterator.
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