How to make an empty generator?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:30:54 -0600, Robert Kern wrote:

>  > If all you want is a generator that doesn't yield anything, then
>  > surely there isn't any one-time processing and you don't need the
>  > comment?
> 
> Sure there is. Python doesn't know that nothing gets yielded until it
> hits the return statement before the yield. When it calls .next() on the
> iterator, the code elided by the comment executes, then the return is
> hit, a StopIteration exception is raised, and the iteration is complete.

I don't understand why you care about having *any* code before the 
StopIteration. That's like:

def empty():
    for x in range(1000):
        pass # Spin wheels uselessly
    return
    yield


What's the point of the wheel spinning? Did I miss something?



-- 
Steven