[Python-Dev] itertools.chain should take an iterable ?

[Jack Diederich]

On Thu, Sep 01, 2005 at 07:58:40PM +0200, Paolino wrote:
> Working on a tree library I've found myself writing 
> itertools.chain(*[child.method() for child in self]).
> Well this happened after I tried instinctively 
> itertools.chain(child.method() for child in self).
> 
> Is there a reason for this signature ?

This is more suited to comp.lang.python

Consider the below examples (and remember that strings are iterable)

>>> import itertools as it
>>> list(it.chain('ABC', 'XYZ'))
['A', 'B', 'C', 'X', 'Y', 'Z']
>>> list(it.chain(['ABC', 'XYZ']))
['ABC', 'XYZ']
>>> list(it.chain(['ABC'], ['XYZ']))
['ABC', 'XYZ']
>>> 

Hope that helps,

-jackdied