Boolean tests [was Re: Attack a sacred Python Cow]

[Terry Reedy]

Carl Banks wrote:

>> As I wrote in the second reply email I sent, check out my integer set
>> recipe on ASPN (and to save you the search:  http://code.activestate.com/recipes/466286/).
> 
> Couple points:
> 
> 1. Any container type that returns a length that isn't exactly the
> number of elements in it is broken.
> 2. The need for __nonzero__ in this case depends on a limitation in
> the language.
> 3. On the other hand, I will concede that sometimes calculating len is
> a lot more expensive than determining emptiness, and at a basic level
> it's important to avoid these costs.  You have found a practical use
> case for __nonzero__.

I thought of another one: testing whether an iterator is 'empty' (will 
raise StopIteration on the next next() (3.0) call) or not.  As virtual 
collections, iterators generally have neither __len__ or __bool__.  But 
__bool__ (but only __bool__) can be added to any iterator by wrapping it 
with something like the following 3.0 code (not tested):

class look_ahead_it():
   def __init__(self, iterable):
     self.it = iter(iterable)
     self.fill_next()

   def __iter__(self):
     return self
   def __next__(self):
     tem = self.next
     if tem is self.empty:
       raise StopIteration
     else:
       self.fill_next()
       return tem

   empty = object()
   def fill_next(self)
     try:
       self.next = next(self.it)
     except StopIteration:
       self.next = self.empty

   def __bool__(self):
     return self.next is not self.empty