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From: Skip Montanaro <skip@pobox.com>
Subject: Re: itertools doc example "consume"
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2013 21:43:21 +0000 (UTC)
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Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly <at> gmail.com> writes:

> Depending on your Python version lst is either a range object or a
> list, neither of which is an iterator.  If you pass to consume an
> iterable object that is not an iterator, it will implicitly obtain an
> iterator for it, consume from the iterator, and then discard the
> iterator, with no effect on the original object.
> 
> In general the itertools functions will work equally well on iterators
> and other iterables, but consume is special in that what it does is
> only relevant to iterators.

Thanks for the explanation.  I clearly still need to grapple with this
stuff a bit...

Skip