Interesting list() un-optimization

[Terry Reedy]

On 3/7/2013 11:00 AM, Ian Kelly wrote:

> But on this point, you are correct.  The mongoengine QuerySet.__iter__
> method is defined as:
>
>      def __iter__(self):
>          self.rewind()
>          return self
>
> This is unfortunate design.  Not only does it mean that the iterator's
> __len__ method cannot be trusted (what should the __len__ of a
> partially exhausted iterator return?), but it also means that requesting
> an iterator over the QuerySet will also silently invalidate any
> existing iterators.

I view that design as a violation of the iterator protocol and hence a 
program bug. __iter__ should either *just* return self (if the self is 
an iterator) or return a new object (if self is a non-iterator 
iterable). File objects are iterators and .__iter__ does not rewind.

 >>> f = open("f:/python/mypy/tem.py")
 >>> next(f)
'class myit(list):\n'
 >>> f2 = iter(f)
 >>> f2 is f
True
 >>> next(f2)
"    def __bytes__(self): return b'hello'\n"

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy