yield_all needed in Python

[Paul Moore]

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:

>     Doug>    def foogen(arg1):
>
>     Doug>       def foogen1(arg2):
>     Doug>          # Some code here
>
>     Doug>       # Some code here
>     Doug>       yield_all foogen1(arg3)
>     Doug>       # Some code here
>     Doug>       yield_all foogen1(arg4)
>     Doug>       # Some code here
>     Doug>       yield_all foogen1(arg5)
>     Doug>       # Some code here
>     Doug>       yield_all foogen1(arg6)
>
> If this idea advances I'd rather see extra syntactic sugar introduced to
> complement the current yield statement instead of adding a new keyword.

You can work around the need for something like yield_all, or
explicit loops, by defining an "iflatten" generator, which yields
every element of its (iterable) argument, unless the element is a
generator, in which case we recurse into it:

>>> from types import GeneratorType
>>> def iflatten(it):
...     it = iter(it)
...     for val in it:
...         if isinstance(val, GeneratorType):
...             for v2 in iflatten(val):
...                 yield v2
...         else:
...             yield val

To take this one step further, you can define an @iflattened
decorator (yes, it needs a better name...)

>>> def iflattened(f):
...     def wrapper(*args, **kw):
...         for val in iflatten(f(*args, **kw)):
...             yield val
...     return wrapper

Now, we can do things like:

>>> @iflattened
... def t():
...     def g1():
...         yield 'a'
...         yield 'b'
...         yield 'c'
...     def g2():
...         yield 'd'
...         yield 'e'
...         yield 'f'
...     yield g1()
...     yield 1
...     yield g2()
...
>>> list(t())
['a', 'b', 'c', 1, 'd', 'e', 'f']

This can probably be tidied up and improved, but it may be a
reasonable workaround for something like the original example.

Paul.
-- 
The most effective way to get information from usenet is not to ask
a question; it is to post incorrect information.  -- Aahz's Law