mrquantum wrote:
> Hello!
>
> Just for curiosity i'd like to know why strings don't support the
> iteration protocoll!? Is there some deeper reason for this?
>
> >>> hasattr('SomeString', '__iter__')
> False
>
> In Python 2.5 it's actually simple to obtain one:
>
> >>> myIter = (c for c in 'SomeString')
> >>> myIter.next()
> 'S'
>
> Thanks for info!
>
> ChrisThe iter() builtin creates an iterator for any object that obeys the sequence protocol. Since strings obey the sequence protocol there is no real advantage to adding yet another protocol to an already very fat object. This does, however, mean that testing for the presence of __iter__ is incomplete; one also has to test for __getattr__ if the object doesn't have an __Iter__ method. Depending on your program logic, it may be easier to just use iter() and handle the exception if it fails. See PEP 234 for a discussion of the reasons for doing it this way. John Roth -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
