Generator
Generators are iterators, a kind of iterable you can only iterate over once.
Generators do not store all the values in memory, they generate the values on the fly:
>>> mygenerator = (x*x for x in range(3))
>>> for i in mygenerator:
... print(i)
0
1
4
Use ()
instead of []
. BUT, you cannot perform for i in mygenerator
a second time since generators can only be used once: they calculate 0, then forget about it and calculate 1, and end calculating 4, one by one.
Yield
yield
is a keyword that is used like return
, except the function will return a generator.
>>> def create_generator():
... mylist = range(3)
... for i in mylist:
... yield i*i
...
>>> mygenerator = create_generator() # create a generator
>>> print(mygenerator) # mygenerator is an object!
<generator object create_generator at 0xb7555c34>
>>> for i in mygenerator:
... print(i)
0
1
4