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up vote 2 down vote favorite

I am currently working on Project Euler problem #2 which requires you to print the sum of all even fibonacci numbers below 4 million.

I just recently learned about generators and from my understanding they are used to decrease memory consumption by generating values on the fly (and not storing them in a huge list).

Does this still work when used in a for loop or will it just generate all values, store them in a list and then loop through them?

for n in some_generator(): pass

In my specific case the code looks like this:

def fibonacci(n): # yields all fibonacci numbers below n
    second_last_n = 0
    last_n = 1
    while (last_n < n):
        current_n = second_last_n + last_n
        second_last_n = last_n
        last_n = current_n
        yield current_n

def filter_even(nums): # yields all numbers in nums (a generator) which are even
    for n in nums:
        if (n % 2 == 0):
            yield n
share|improve this question
up vote 3 down vote accepted

It's weird that the fibonacci() generates a sequence that starts with 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, …. Conventionally, the Fibonacci sequence starts with either 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, … or 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, ….

A purer approach would be to use [itertools.takewhile()] in conjunction with an infinite generator.

You should also take advantage of parallel assignment.

The fibonacci() generator would look like this:

def fibonacci():
    a, b = 0, 1
    while True:
        yield a
        a, b = b, a + b

filter_even() is fine. You could also just write a generator expression instead.

from itertools import takewhile

print(sum(n for n in takewhile(lambda n: n < 4000000, fibonacci()) if n % 2 == 0))
share|improve this answer
    
...The comment # yields all fibonacci numbers below n is misleading.... sorry, I just fixed the code to use a while loop instead of a for loop, so the comment should be right.. – Dominik Schmidt Apr 17 '15 at 20:05
1  
In the future, please refrain from modifying code in the question after posting. – 200_success♦ Apr 17 '15 at 20:11

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