Iterators

An iterator allows you to loop over a set of data generated one value at a time. Using an iterator is more memory efficient than storing the entire sequence in memory and iterating over that.

Example:

# An iterable returns an iterator object that can be processed in a for loop
class Unicoder():
    # The sole purpose of this class is to build an iterator for
    # testing.
    current = None
    start = 50
    stop = 1000
    def __iter__(self):
        self.current = self.start
        return self
    def next(self):
        if self.current <= self.stop:
            ret = unichr(self.current)
            self.current += 1
            return ret
        else:
            # This step is important.
            # We are _required_ to raise StopIteration in an iterator.
            raise StopIteration()

u = Unicoder()
for char in u:
    print char