A question about yield

[Chris Rebert]

On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 9:34 AM, chad <cdalten at gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
> #!/usr/local/bin/python
>
> import sys
>
> def construct_set(data):
>    for line in data:
>        lines = line.splitlines()
>        for curline in lines:
>            if curline.strip():
>                key = curline.split(' ')
>                value = int(key[0])
>                yield value
>
> def approximate(first, second):
>    midpoint = (first + second) / 2
>    return midpoint
>
> def format(input):
>    prev = 0
>    value = int(input)
>
>    with open("/home/cdalten/oakland/freq") as f:
>        for next in construct_set(f):
>            if value > prev:
>                current = prev
>                prev = next
>
>        middle = approximate(current, prev)
>        if middle < prev and value > middle:
>            return prev
>        elif value > current and current < middle:
>            return current
<snip>
> The question is about the construct_set() function.
<snip>
> I have it yield on 'value' instead of 'curline'. Will the program
> still read the input file named freq line by line even though I don't
> have it yielding on 'curline'? Or since I have it yield on 'value',
> will it read the entire input file into memory at once?

The former. The yield has no effect at all on how the file is read.
The "for line in data:" iteration over the file object is what makes
Python read from the file line-by-line. Incidentally, the use of
splitlines() is pointless; you're already getting single lines from
the file object by iterating over it, so splitlines() will always
return a single-element list.

Cheers,
Chris
--
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