[Python-ideas] iter() on steroids (original) (raw)

Greg Ewing greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz
Sat Apr 14 03:51:57 CEST 2007

George Sakkis wrote:

The proposal is to make the the builtin iter() return an object with an API that consists of (most) functions currently at itertools.

The problem with this kind of thing is that it becomes an arbitrary choice what is included as a method. Anything not included in that choice is left out in the cold and has to be applied as a function anyway.

If there were a certain set of iterator algebra functions that were very frequently used, there could be an argument for making methods of them. But I think you're overestimating how much the itertools functions are used. Some people may make heavy use of them, but they're not used much in general.

If you happen to be a heavy user, there's nothing stopping you from creating your own version of iter() that returns an object with all the methods you want. Let's keep the standard iterator objects clean and simple.

-- Greg

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