itertools.izip brokeness

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 05 Jan 2006 23:52:13 -0800, Paul Rubin wrote:

> rurpy at yahoo.com writes:
>> def izip4(*iterables, **kw):
>>      """kw:fill. An element that will pad the shorter iterable
>>         kw:infinite. Number of non-terminating iterators """
> 
> That's a really kludgy API.  I'm not sure what to propose instead:
> maybe some way of distinguishing which iterables are supposed to be
> iterated til exhaustion (untested):
> 
>     class Discardable(object): pass
> 
>     def izip5(*iterables, fill=None):

Doesn't work: keyword arguments must be listed before * and ** arguments.

>>> def izip5(*iterables, fill=None):
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    def izip5(*iterables, fill=None):
                             ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax


Personally, I don't see anything wrong with an API of

function(*iterators [, fill]):
   Perform function on one or more iterators, with an optional fill
   object.

Of course, this has to be defined in code as:

def function(*iterators, **kwargs):
    if kwargs.keys() != ["fill"]:
        raise ValueError
    ...

It might not be the easiest API to extend, but for a special case like
this, I think it is perfectly usable.


-- 
Steven.