In need of a binge-and-purge idiom

[Manuel Garcia]

On Sun, 23 Mar 2003 14:19:53 -0500, "Tim Peters"
<tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:

>If the code made sense <wink>, something like
>
>def terminated_iterator(iterable, a_seperator):
>    for element in iterable:
>        yield element
>    yield a_separator
>
>would produce the original sequence, then tack a_separator on to the end.

Isn't it a general rule that terminators are easier to work with than
separators?  I remember some programming guru saying this (Jon
Bentley?)  I think it was Pascal's use of separators between
statements that convinced Dennis Ritchie to use terminators instead.

When I have to deal with separators, I always tack an extra one on the
end, using a trick like the one above, or a simple append or
concatenation.  This is usually good to make a boolean or repeated
code vanish.  For string processing, I usually throw an extra one on
the front too, for good luck.

Separator is also harder to spell than terminator.  ;-)

Manuel