count items in generator

[Delaney, Timothy (Tim)]

George Sakkis wrote:

> Paul Rubin wrote:
> 
>> claird at lairds.us (Cameron Laird) writes:
>>> For that matter, would it be an advantage for len() to operate
>>> on iterables?
>> 
>>    print len(itertools.count())
>> 
>> Ouch!!
> 
> How is this worse than list(itertools.count()) ?

list(itertools.count()) will eventually fail with a MemoryError.

Actually len(itertools.count()) would as well - when a couple of long
instances used up everything available - but it would take a *lot*
longer.

Tim Delaney