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| title |
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| Generators |
Generators
Generators are a special type of function that allows you to return values without ending a function. It does this by using the yield keyword. Similar to return, the yield expression will return a value to the caller. The key difference between the two is that yield will suspend the function, allowing for more values to be returned in the future.
Generators are iterable so they can be used cleanly with for loops or anything else that iterates.
def my_generator():
yield 'hello'
yield 'world'
yield '!'
for item in my_generator():
print(item)
# output:
# hello
# world
# !
Like other iterators, generators can be passed to the next function to retrieve the next item. When a generator has no more values to yield, a StopIteration error is raised.
g = my_generator()
print(next(g))
# 'hello'
print(next(g))
# 'world'
print(next(g))
# '!'
print(next(g))
# Traceback (most recent call last):
# File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
# StopIteration
Generators are particularly useful when you need to create a large set of values but do not need to keep them all in memory at the same time. For example, if you need to print the first million fibonacci numbers, you would typically return a list of a million values and iterate over the list to print each value. However with a generator, you can return each value one at a time:
def fib(n):
a = 1
b = 1
for i in range(n):
yield a
a, b = b, a + b
for x in fib(1000000):
print(x)