How to identify generator/iterator objects?

[Leo Kislov]

Michael Spencer wrote:
> Kenneth McDonald wrote:
> > I'm trying to write a 'flatten' generator which, when give a
> > generator/iterator that can yield iterators, generators, and other data
> > types, will 'flatten' everything so that it in turns yields stuff by
> > simply yielding the instances of other types, and recursively yields the
> > stuff yielded by the gen/iter objects.
> >
> > To do this, I need to determine (as fair as I can see), what are
> > generator and iterator objects. Unfortunately:
> >
> >  >>> iter("abc")
> > <iterator object at 0x61d90>
> >  >>> def f(x):
> > ...     for s in x: yield s
> > ...
> >  >>> f
> > <function f at 0x58230>
> >  >>> f.__class__
> > <type 'function'>
> >
> > So while I can identify iterators, I can't identify generators by class.
> >
> > Is there a way to do this? Or perhaps another (better) way to achieve
> > this flattening effect? itertools doesn't seem to have anything that
> > will do it.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Ken
> I *think* the only way to tell if a function is a generator without calling it
> is to inspect the compilation flags of its code object:
>
>   >>> from compiler.consts import CO_GENERATOR
>   >>> def is_generator(f):
>   ...     return f.func_code.co_flags & CO_GENERATOR != 0
>   ...
>   >>> def f1(): yield 1
>   ...
>   >>> def f2(): return 1
>   ...
>   >>> is_generator(f1)
>   True
>   >>> is_generator(f2)
>   False
>   >>>

It should be noted that this checking is completely irrelevant for the
purpose of writing flatten generator. Given

def inc(n):
    yield n+1

the following conditions should be true:

list(flatten([inc,inc])) == [inc,inc]
list(flatten([inc(3),inc(4)]) == [4,5]

  -- Leo