[Python-ideas] x=(yield from) confusion [was:Yet another alternative name for yield-from] (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Mon Apr 6 23:36:08 CEST 2009

Jacob Holm wrote:

Another option (if you insist that it is an error to return a value after a GeneratorExit) is to let close() raise a RuntimeError when it catches a StopIteration with a non-None value.

Why do you consider it OK for close() to throw away all of the values the generator might have yielded in the future, but not OK for it to throw away the generator's return value? The objection I have to having close() return a value is that it encourages people to start using GeneratorExit in their normal generator control flow and I think that's a really bad idea (on par with calling sys.exit() and then trapping SystemExit to terminate a search loop - perfectly legal from a language point of view, but a really bad plan nonetheless).

Now, the fact that repeatedly calling next()/send()/throw() on a finished generator is meant to keep reraising the same StopIteration that was thrown when the generator first terminated is a much better justification for preserving the return value on the generator object. But coupling that with the idea of close() doing anything more than giving an unfinished generator a final chance to release any resources it is holding is mixing two completely different ideas.

Better to just add a "value" property to generators that raises a RuntimeError if the generator frame hasn't terminated yet (probably along with a "finished" property to allow LBYL interrogation of the generator state).

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan at gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia

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