Restart generator when it is exhausted.

[Lacrima]

On Apr 28, 6:38 pm, "J. Cliff Dyer" <j... at sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-04-28 at 10:41 +0000, Duncan Booth wrote:
> > Lacrima <Lacrima.Ma... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > If it is not possible what are common techniques to use iterator or
> > > generator objects that allow restarting when it is needed?
>
> > The usual thing if you want to use the generator's output more than once  
> > would be to convert the generator to a list, then you can iterate over it
> > as often as you want.
>
> > >>> a = ['a', 'b', 'c']
> > >>> g = (i for i in a)
> > >>> restartable = list(g)
>
> > If you want the output of the generator to potentially change each time you
> > iterate then you need to create a new generator.
>
> More verbosely, but without putting your generator in , you can use the
> iterator protocol to create a reusable iterable:
>
> An iterable is a class with an __iter__ method that returns an iterator.
>
> So for example:
>
> class Iterator(object):
>     def __init__(self, filename):
>         self.f = open(filename)
>
>     def __iter__(self):
>         return self
>
>     def next(self):
>         line = self.f.readline()
>         if not line:
>             raise StopIteration
>         return line.strip()[:8]
>
> is an iterator (which is also an iterable), which will grab each line of
> a file, returning the first eight non-whitespace characters until the
> file is used up.  Then the iterator is exhausted, and will continue to
> raise StopIteration each time it is called.
>
> class Iterable(object):
>     def __init__(self, filename):
>         self.filename = filename
>
>     def __iter__(self):
>         return Iterator(self.filename)
>
> This is a reusable iterable which returns a new instance of the Iterator
> class above each time it is exhausted.
>
> So given a file hello.txt:
>
>   Hello world
>     Hola mundo
>   Guten tag, weld.
>
> The classes can be used as followed:>>> iterator = Iterator('hello.txt')
> >>> for i in xrange(3):
> >>>     print "*** %d ***" % i
> >>>     for j in iterator:
> >>>         print j
>
> *** 0 ***
> Hello wo
> Hola mun
> Guten ta
> *** 1 ***
> *** 2 ***>>> iterable = Iterable('hello.txt')
> >>> for i in xrange(3):
> >>>     print "*** %d ***" % i
> >>>     for j in iterable:
> >>>         print j
>
> *** 0 ***
> Hello wo
> Hola mun
> Guten ta
> *** 1 ***
> Hello wo
> Hola mun
> Guten ta
> *** 2 ***
> Hello wo
> Hola mun
> Guten ta
>
> When Iterator hits a StopIteration, it passes out of the inner loop, and
> when it comes back in, the inner loop calls iterator.__iter__(), and
> gets the same exhausted iterator (which immediately breaks the inner
> loop by raising StopIteration).  In Iterable, when the loop calls
> iterable.__iter__(), it gets a fresh iterator, so it can loop over the
> file again.
>
> The important thing is that when you call x.__iter__() (which you do
> when entering a loop), you get a fresh iterator that won't just call
> StopIteration right away.
>
> Cheers,
> Cliff

Thank you very much! You completely have enlightened me on all my
questions!

-Max