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Iterators & generators (RE: Real Problems with Python)

William Tanksley wtanksle at hawking.armored.net
Mon Feb 14 00:47:15 EST 2000 
On 14 Feb 2000 02:02:55 GMT, Samuel A. Falvo II wrote:
>In article <000001bf768e$48e40580$45a0143f at tim>, Tim Peters wrote:

>>class BinTree:
>>   # with members .left and .right of type BinTree (& None means none),
>>   # and .data of an arbitrary type
>>   ...
>>   def traverse_post(self):
>>       for child in self.left, self.right:
>>           if child is not None:
>>               suspend child.traverse_post()
>>       suspend self.data

>>b = BinTree()
>>...
>>for leaf in b.traverse_post():
>>    process(leaf)

>I'm sorry, but I can't follow this code at all.  What are the precise
>semantics of suspend here?  How does it return?

Sam, imagine that instead of 'suspend' Tim had written 'return'.  You see,
then, that this would be a deeply recursive function which would return
the data contained in the deepest node of the left-hand branch of the
tree, right?  (Ignore the fact that such recursion would be rather silly
-- thanks to the 'suspend' it's not the same.)

Well, it so happens that this is precisely what this function (using
suspend instead of return) returns the first time it's called.  The second
time it's called it continues what it was doing when it did the last
suspend -- look at it.  It's asking each of its children to do a
post-order traversal, and after they finish, return their own data.  In
other words, it's doing a depth-first search and allowing you to treat the
result as a sequence.

Kind of.

If you have more questions, call me; I teach better that way.  Or you
could learn Icon -- it's a really cool language, and lots of fun.  Sather
includes a similar construct, although (alas!) I never saw it as fun
there.  Perhaps I was jaded, or maybe Sather didn't do it as well.

>KC5TJA/6, DM13, QRP-L #1447

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley, in hoc signo hack
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