[Tutor] Generator function question?

[John Clark]

Hello, 

I am working on learning Python and writing some console applications to
apply what I am learning - I am using a generator function to implement a
status indicator as follows:

import sys

 def neverEndingStatus(currentChar_ = '|'):
    while 1:
        if currentChar_ == '|':
            currentChar_ = '\\'
        elif currentChar_ == '\\':
            currentChar_ = '-'
        elif currentChar_ == '-':
            currentChar_ = '/'
        elif currentChar_ == '/':
            currentChar_ = '|'
        yield currentChar_
        

x = neverEndingStatus()

def Test1():
    for w in range(1, 100):
        sys.stderr.write('\b'+x.next())
        for z in range(1, 10000):
            z = z + 1

def Test2():
    for y in range(1, 10):
        sys.stderr.write('\b \nTesting'+str(y)+'\t')
        Test1()
    
Test2()

My question - the creation of the global variable x seems kludged - when I
first started with this I thought I was going to be coding something like
sys.stderr.write('\b'+neverEndingStatus()) but that just returns '\' each
time and I now recognize why.  I am just thinking there has to be a way to
encapsulate the generator function, the global variable and the .next() call
so that it is much cleaner in the client code.

My guess is that I could create a class, override the __call__ method and
get to the point where my code is something like:
sys.stderr.write('\b'+statusClass()) but that seems to be heavy
(implementing a class) and intrusive (overriding the __call__ method seems a
bit heavy handed) - my reluctance may be just because I am less familiar
with those particular constructs in Python, but it still feels like I should
be able to do this more cleanly without that.

Also - I look at the code in the neverEndingStatus() function and I just
_know_ there has to be a better way to write that - it's just not coming to
me.  Any suggestions are embarrassingly appreciated...

Thanks,
-jdc