iterator clone

[Peter Otten]

Yosifov Pavel wrote:

> On 13 июл, 14:12, Peter Otten <__pete... at web.de> wrote:
>> Yosifov Pavel wrote:
>> > Whats is the way to clone "independent" iterator? I can't use tee(),
>> > because I don't know how many "independent" iterators I need. copy and
>> > deepcopy doesn't work...
>>
>> There is no general way. For "short" sequences you can store the items in
>> a list which is also the worst-case behaviour of tee().
>>
>> What are you trying to do?
>>
>> Peter
> 
> I try to generate iterators (iterator of iterators). Peter, you are
> right! Thank you. For example, it's possible to use something like
> this:
> 
> def cloneiter( it ):
>     """return (clonable,clone)"""
>     return tee(it)

[snip]

That is too abstract, sorry. What concrete problem are you trying to solve
with your cloned iterators? There might be a way to rearrange your setup in
a way that doesn't need them.

> But I think (I'm sure!) it's deficiency of Python iterators! They are
> not very good...

Well, I think Python's iterators, especially the generators, are beautiful.
More importantly, I think there is no general way to make iterators
copyable, regardless of the programming language. The problem is that most
of the useful ones depend on external state.

Peter