Python name of iterable that can be iterated many times

Question

I'm trying to improve my documentation. I want to say that this function accepts something that is a collections.Iterable, but the code will iterate over the iterable many times. A "list" is too specific, and an "iterable" doesn't work because some iterables can only be iterated once.

Is there a name for a thing? "Re-iterable"? Multiple-iterable?

Not answering your question, but I would suggest you might use itertools.tee in your code - so that it could accept any iterable at all. — jsbueno
– jsbueno, Commented Dec 12, 2011 at 14:31
@jsbueno: This would introduce a redundant copy when passing in a sequence, though. — Sven Marnach
– Sven Marnach, Commented Dec 12, 2011 at 15:01
@SvenMarnach: Actually, "tee" does just "the right thing" - it would only have "multiple copies" of sequence values that where used once, but not yet all times. The problem need to be one very resource-critical for this caching to be an issue at all. AND if it was, it would be a matter of an if for not using tee if a sequence was passed in. — jsbueno
– jsbueno, Commented Dec 12, 2011 at 17:56
@jsbueno: Why doesn't tee automatically do the right thing when a sequence is passed to it? — Neil G
– Neil G, Commented Jan 7, 2012 at 23:33

Sven Marnach · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-12 13:44:04Z

5

You probably want the term "sequence". A sequence in Python is something that has a length and supports item access by index.

answered Dec 12, 2011 at 13:44

Sven Marnach

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3 Comments

Sideshow Bob Over a year ago

That might be too specific also though - for example a linked list doesn't support access by index, but is still reiterable.

Sven Marnach Over a year ago

@SideshowBob: I don't think this is too restrictive in practice. The only linked-list implementation that comes with Python is the chunked linked list deque, which is a sequence as well. Of course accessing by index is O(n) for a deque.

Neil G Over a year ago

@SvenMarnach: A ValuesView is "reiterable", but doesn't support access by index in general.

Sideshow Bob · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-12 13:50:26Z

2

I can't think of anything appropriate. Reiterable sounds like a nice term, why not define it clearly in your documentation then use it?

answered Dec 12, 2011 at 13:50

Sideshow Bob

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