How do you refer to an iterator in docs?

Chris Angelico rosuav at gmail.com
Fri Apr 20 23:42:28 EDT 2012


On Sat, Apr 21, 2012 at 1:01 PM, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:
> Because an iterator isn't a container.  I don't know, maybe it does make
> sense, but my first impression is that it sounds wrong.
>
> A basket of apples is a basket which contains apples, in the same way a
> list contains foos.  But an iterator doesn't contain anything.  You
> wouldn't say, "a spigot of water", because the spigot isn't a container
> holding the water.  It is simply a mechanism for delivering the water in
> a controlled way.

But if you have a spigot of hot water and a spigot of cold water,
those terms make perfect sense even though the spigots don't "contain"
that water. I could be a fount of all (unreliable) knowledge by using
Google, Wikipedia, and Blogger to answer questions, but I don't
"contain" that knowledge.

I'd use "iterable" in exactly the same grammatical way that I'd use
"list". Write it with "list" and then s/list/iterable/ and it'll be
grammatical.

ChrisA



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