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up vote 1 down vote favorite

I recently came across the idea of generators in Python, so I made a basic example for myself:

def gen(lim):
    print 'This is a generator'
    for elem in xrange(lim):
        yield elem
    yield 'still generator...'
    print 'done'

x = gen
print x
x = x(10)
print x
print x.next()
print x.next()

I was wondering if there was any way to iterate through my variable x and have to write out print x.next() 11 times to print everything.

share|improve this question
up vote 2 down vote accepted

That's the whole point of using a generator in the first place:

for i in x:
    print i

This is a generator
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
still generator...
done
share|improve this answer
    
If I wanted to use the .next() method, I would just treat x like a list and use .next() to iterate through the list? – Max Kim Jul 14 '13 at 15:20
    
@MaxKim Why would you want to use the .next() method? You can iterate through a generator using a simple for-loop as shown above. – arshajii Jul 14 '13 at 15:26
up vote 2 down vote

Yes. You can actually just iterate through the generator as if it were a list (or other iterable):

x = gen(11)
for i in x:
    print i

Calling x.next() is actually not particular to generators — you could do it with a list too if you wanted to. But you don't do it with a list, you use a for loop: same with generators.

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up vote 1 down vote

You can use for loop to iterate generator.

def gen(lim):
    print 'This is a generator'
    for elem in xrange(lim):
        yield elem
    yield 'still generator...'
    print 'done'

for x in gen(10):
    print x
share|improve this answer

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