On Tue, 17 Mar 2015 01:35 am, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > On Tue, 17 Mar 2015 01:19 am, Rustom Mody wrote: > >> On Monday, March 16, 2015 at 7:10:03 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote: >>> And of course, from a comp science theoretic perspective, >>> generators are a kind of subroutine, not a kind of type. >> >> You just showed Marko a few posts back, that >> A generator is a special case of an iterator. >> And you wrote the iterator with 'class'. >> And from python 2.2(?) classes are types. > > Yes, but iterators aren't *classes*, they are instances. > > >> So I dont know what "comp science theoretic perspective" you are >> describing... > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generator_(computer_programming) > > "A generator is very similar to a function that returns an array, in that > a generator has parameters, can be called, and generates a sequence of > values. However, instead of building an array containing all the values > and returning them all at once, a generator yields the values one at a > time, which requires less memory and allows the caller to get started > processing the first few values immediately. In short, a generator looks > like a function but behaves like an iterator."
Oops, itchy trigger finger... the next paragraph is even more important: "Generators can be implemented in terms of more expressive control flow constructs, such as coroutines or first-class continuations.[2] Generators, also known as semicoroutines,[3] are a special case of (and weaker than) coroutines, in that they always yield control back to the caller (when passing a value back), rather than specifying a coroutine to jump to; see comparison of coroutines with generators." -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
