extracting a heapq in a for loop - there must be more elegant solution

[Helmut Jarausch]

On Tue, 03 Dec 2013 15:56:11 +0200, Jussi Piitulainen wrote:

> Helmut Jarausch writes:
> ...
>> I know I could use a while loop but I don't like it.
> ...
>> from heapq import heappush, heappop
>> # heappop raises IndexError if heap is empty
> ...
>> # how to avoid / simplify the following function
>> 
>> def in_sequence(H) :
>>   try :
>>     while True :
>>       N= heappop(H)
>>       yield N
>>   except IndexError :
>>     raise StopIteration
> 
> That seems equivalent to this:
> 
> def in_sequence(H):
>   while H: yield heappop(H)

Many thanks, that's something I'd hoped for.

> But I don't like the side-effect. I'd change the name to something
> that indicates the draining of the heap - heapaerobic? - or consider
> sorted(H) instead as others suggested.

Since I fill the heap once and empty it afterwards I regard the side-effect
clearly visible.

Helmut