iterators and continuing after a StopIteration

[MRAB]

Roald de Vries wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> 
> I have a list that I'm iterating over, and during the iteration items 
> are appended. Moreover, it is iterated over in two nested loops. If the 
> inner loop comes to the end, I want the outer loop to append an item. Is 
> there a way to do this? Because once an iterator has raised a 
> StopIteration, it can not go to a next item anymore.
> 
> Aside question: is there a rationale for the current behavior? To me it 
> seems more natural to continue iteration after appending new items.
> 
> 
> I want to use it for a graph walk.
> 
> nodes is a list of all nodes,
> edges is an on the fly constructed list of edges in the order of visiting,
> initial_nodes is a list of (root) nodes
> 
>     edges = []
>     edge_it = iter(edges)
>     for node in initial_nodes:
>         edges += node.leaving_edges
>         try:
>             while True:
>                 edge = edge_it.next()
>                 edges += edge.head.leaving_edges
>         except StopIteration:
>             pass
> 
> 
> Thanks in advance, cheers, Roald

You could add the new edges to another list:

     edges = []
     pending_edges = []
     for node in initial_nodes:
         pending_edges += node.leaving_edges
     while pending_edges:
         new_edges = []
         for edge in pending_edges:
             new_edges += edge.head.leaving_edges
         edges += pending_edges
         pending_edges = new_edges

or use indexing:

     edges = []
     for node in initial_nodes:
         edges += node.leaving_edges
     index = 0
     while index < len(edges):
         edges += edges[index].head.leaving_edges
         index += 1