say we did the following: (ignore if this is silly or if there is a better way, it's a simplified example)
from itertools import izip
def check(someList):
for item in someList:
yield item[0]
for items in izip(check(someHugeList1), check(someHugeList2)):
//some logic
since check is a generator, is it redundant to use izip? Would using regular zip be just as good?
Regular zip() would expand the whole generator first. You wouldn't want to do that with a huge or endless generator.
Demo:
>>> def gen():
... print 'generating'
... yield 'a'
...
>>> gen()
<generator object gen at 0x10747f320>
>>> zip(gen(), gen())
generating
generating
[('a', 'a')]
Note that directly creating the generator doesn't print anything; the generator is still in the paused state. But passing the generator to zip() immediately produces output, which can only be produced by iterating over the generators in full.
On Python 3, zip behaves same as Python2's izip. On Python2, izip returns a generator while zip returns a list, izip would be better in memory(doesn't create a new list.).
