TITLE OF PAPER: Iterators and Generators: It Ain't Your Gramp's Loop Any More
URL OF PRESENTATION: _URL_of_powerpoint_presentation_
PRESENTED BY: Alex Martelli
REPRESENTING: _name_of_the_company_they_represent_

CONFERENCE: PyCon 2005
DATE: March 24, 2005
LOCATION: Marvin Theater
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Started in the middle...

iter's Sentinel form

#  Handy for 
def sentiter(f, sentinel):
    """Loop till the value yielded from an iterator is a certain arbitrary
        "sentinel" value."""
    while True:
        r = f()
        if r == sentinel: break
        yield r

A think out of the box usage
import random
randiter = iter(random.random, -1,0)
note: an infinite iterator

Infinite iterators--not really a problem; all you waste is the RAM to store the
    state of the iterator. "This is why we have the 'break' statement in 'for'
    loops."
        <generation of fibonacci numbers>

"Peekable iterator"
    An iterator which wraps another iter and which lets you "peek" ahead -- maintains a lookahead cache (have a membersequence to represent the lookahead cache)
    
Generator
    a function containing keyword yield
    when called returns an iterator x
    x.next() starts executing body
    until it meets a yield y
        then it returns y and freezes the state
    or meets a return (or falls off the end)
        Then, it raises StopIteration.

Generator Expressions
    Like listcomps but for generators - use () instead of []

Make any loop a for loop
    Big code example: if you have a hairy "for loop" condition, break it off as
        a generator, and use for...in all the time.
    Another example is to flatten tree-walking into a sequence iteration.
    Use generators to centralize code in a single place--DontRepeatYourself.
    
Encapsulate recursion (inside a generator)

Iterators: not just for's.
    co-routine like behavior

Infinite generators - use these to produce infinite iterators
    fibonacci
    sieve of eratosthenes as a generator
    
itertools
    a module in the standard library
    build iterators, mostly from other iterators, sequences, or other iterables
        izip, ifler, islice, imap, stsarmap, tee, chain, takewhile, dropwhile,
        groupby
    build potentially infinite iterators:
        count, cycle, repeat
    /fast/, fundamental, composable "building blocks" for many kinds of loops:
        skip items, truncate, whatever

itertools are *fast*
    for example, say we need to do something 1000 times:
        range() works, xrange() is better (sparse), but an iterator is even
            faster:
                range(1000) 144us
                xrang(1000) 123 us
                itertools.repeat(0, 1000) 104us
        In fact, xrange() should be deprecated, he says.

Truncating infinities
    use itertools.islice itertools.takewhile
    list(it.takewhile(lambda x:x<X, primes()))  # a list of primes less than X

"Striding" w/ itertools
    traverse a sequence by a stride


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CONTRIBUTORS: {add your name, e-mail address and URL below}
Erik Rose <corp@grinchcentral.com>
Ted Leun <twl@sauria.com> <http://www.sauria.com/blog>

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