Why does next raise a 'StopIteration', but 'for' do a normal return?
The for
loop listens for StopIteration
explicitly.
The purpose of the for
statement is to loop over the sequence provided by an iterator and the exception is used to signal that the iterator is now done; for
doesn't catch other exceptions raised by the object being iterated over, just that one.
That's because StopIteration
is the normal, expected signal to tell whomever is iterating that there is nothing more to be produced.
A generator function is a special kind of iterator; it indeed raises StopIteration
when the function is done (i.e. when it returns, so yes, return None
raises StopIteration
). It is a requirement of iterators; they must raise StopIteration
when they are done; in fact, once a StopIteration
has been raised, attempting to get another element from them (through next()
, or calling the .next()
(py 2) or .__next__()
(py 3) method on the iterator) must always raise StopIteration
again.
GeneratorExit
is an exception to communicate in the other direction. You are explicitly closing a generator with a yield
expression, and the way Python communicates that closure to the generator is by raising GeneratorExit
inside of that function. You explicitly catch that exception inside of countdown
, its purpose is to let a generator clean up resources as needed when closing.
A GeneratorExit
is not propagated to the caller; see the generator.close()
documentation.
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sophros
I am passionate for Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. On the daily basis I am a Data Scientist using mainly Python (since 2004 and v. 2.3), but I have tried also C++, and .NET while currently making inroads into Julia territories. Recent interests incl. Causation, Document Intelligence, Probabilistic Programming (Gen.jl), Active Learning, Imbalanced Learning, NLG, Formal Concept Analysis. Beyond my technical and research interests, I have seriously romanced with Project Management (PMP since 2011), and Scrum (CSM since 2010). Out of random trivia facts, I am proud to have discovered TRIZ in early '90s while it seems like a buzzword of just the last few years...
Updated on July 08, 2022Comments
-
sophros almost 2 years
In this piece of code, why does using
for
result in noStopIteration
or is thefor
loop trapping all exceptions and then silently exiting? In which case, why do we have the extraneousreturn
?? Or is theraise StopIteration
caused by:return None
?#!/usr/bin/python3.1 def countdown(n): print("counting down") while n >= 9: yield n n -= 1 return for x in countdown(10): print(x) c = countdown(10) next(c) next(c) next(c)
Assuming
StopIteration
is being triggered by:return None
. When isGeneratorExit
generated?def countdown(n): print("Counting down from %d" % n) try: while n > 0: yield n n = n - 1 except GeneratorExit: print("Only made it to %d" % n)
If I manually do a:
c = countdown(10) c.close() #generates GeneratorExit??
In which case why don't I see a traceback?
-
Qiang Xu almost 3 years
StopIteration
could probably be avoided by providing a default value fornext()
, in case of no match is found, likenext(generator_expression, None)
.