Pre-PEP: reverse iteration methods

[Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters]

|> >As infinite iterators are rare, it would not be too cumbersome to
|> >let them identify themselves as such.

David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote previously:
|It would be quite cumbersome to have to identify simple generators as
|infinite or finite manually, and impossible (halting problem) to do so
|reliably automatically.

Humans cannot solve the halting problem either, FWIW.  Just because a
programmer THINKS an iterator is finite, it don't mean it is!

Actually, to my mind, infinite iterators are the RULE not the exception.
Or if not actually infinite, iterators tend to be *indefinitely* large.
That is, I use an iterator because I want to deal with something at
runtime whose size is unbounded at programming time (e.g. an external
file, or data from a socket).

Overall, this makes me -1 on the whole idea of reverse iteration.

Moreover, even iterators that are known to be finite and even of
reasonable size will often be SLOW.  For example, I might naturally
write a simple generator to get data from a socket.  Each time a block
of data comes in, I take some action based on it.  I want those actions
to happen as soon as the relevant chunk of data is available, even
though the socket is probably much slower than the CPU.  If my GUI needs
to wait for ALL the data in order to play the event in reverse, that
might cause very uncomfortable pauses in the interface.  On the other
hand, if the widget updates every second (even for a couple minutes
total), that seems reasonable enough.

Yours, Lulu...

--
    _/_/_/ THIS MESSAGE WAS BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Postmodern Enterprises _/_/_/
   _/_/    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[mertz at gnosis.cx]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  _/_/
  _/_/  The opinions expressed here must be those of my employer...   _/_/
 _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Surely you don't think that *I* believe them!  _/_/