yield

[Mark Borgerding]

km wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> i didnt understand the purpose of  'yield' keyword and the concept of 'generators' in python.  can someone explain me with a small example how  generators differ from normal function calls?
> kindly enlighten
> regards,
> KM
> 

I think of it as an "interrupt" that provides a value back to the caller 
for each value in a sequence.  It can also be loosely thought of as an 
iterator(sort of).



Here's an example that may (or may not) help:


def foo():
     print 'entering foo function'
     for i in range(3):
         print 'yielding %s' % i
         yield i
     print 'leaving foo function'

for x in foo():
     print  'x is %s' % x

################
prints out the following:

entering foo function
yielding 0
x is 0
yielding 1
x is 1
yielding 2
x is 2
leaving foo function