How do you refer to an iterator in docs?

[Jacob MacDonald]

On Thursday, April 19, 2012 5:21:20 AM UTC-7, Roy Smith wrote:
> Let's say I have a function which takes a list of words.  I might write 
> the docstring for it something like:
> 
> def foo(words):
>    "Foo-ify words (which must be a list)"
> 
> What if I want words to be the more general case of something you can 
> iterate over?  How do people talk about that in docstrings?  Do you say 
> "something which can be iterated over to yield words", "an iterable over 
> words", or what?
> 
> I can think of lots of ways to describe the concept, but most of them 
> seem rather verbose and awkward compared to "a list of words", "a 
> dictionary whose keys are words", etc.

When I talk about an iterable, I say "iterable". Based on my recent readings of the style guide PEPs I would write something like:

"""Foo-ify some words.

Arguments:
words -- an iterable of words

"""

Just remember that types don't matter (until you get down to the C, really), just the methods associated with an object.

Have fun and happy coding!