dictionary size changed during iteration

Laszlo Nagy gandalf at shopzeus.com
Wed Apr 20 08:52:59 EDT 2011


Given this iterator:

class SomeIterableObject(object):
     ....
     ....

     def __iter__(self):
         ukeys = self.updates.keys()
         for key in ukeys:
             if self.updates.has_key(key):
                 yield self.updates[key]
         for rec in self.inserts:
             yield rec
     ....
     ....

How can I get this exception:

RuntimeError: dictionary changed size during iteration


It is true that self.updates is being changed during the iteration. But 
I have created the "ukeys" variable solely to prevent this kind of 
error. Here is a proof of correctness:

>>>  d = {1:1,2:2}
>>>  k = d.keys()
>>>  del d[1]
>>>  k
[1, 2]
>>>  k is d.keys()
False

So what is wrong with this iterator? Why am I getting this error message?

Thanks,

    Laszlo




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