Python: the mechanism behind list comprehension

Question

When using list comprehension or the in keyword in a for loop context, i.e:

for o in X:
    do_something_with(o)

or

l=[o for o in X]

• How does the mechanism behind in works?
• Which functions\methods within X does it call?
• If X can comply to more than one method, what's the precedence?
• How to write an efficient X, so that list comprehension will be quick?

Answer 1

The, afaik, complete and correct answer.

for, both in for loops and list comprehensions, calls iter() on X. iter() will return an iterable if X either has an __iter__ method or a __getitem__ method. If it implements both, __iter__ is used. If it has neither you get TypeError: 'Nothing' object is not iterable.

This implements a __getitem__:

class GetItem(object):
    def __init__(self, data):
        self.data = data

    def __getitem__(self, x):
        return self.data[x]

Usage:

>>> data = range(10)
>>> print [x*x for x in GetItem(data)]
[0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81]

This is an example of implementing __iter__:

class TheIterator(object):
    def __init__(self, data):
        self.data = data
        self.index = -1

    # Note: In  Python 3 this is called __next__
    def next(self):
        self.index += 1
        try:
            return self.data[self.index]
        except IndexError:
            raise StopIteration

    def __iter__(self):
        return self

class Iter(object):
    def __init__(self, data):
        self.data = data

    def __iter__(self):
        return TheIterator(data)

Usage:

>>> data = range(10)
>>> print [x*x for x in Iter(data)]
[0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81]

As you see you need both to implement an iterator, and __iter__ that returns the iterator.

You can combine them:

class CombinedIter(object):
    def __init__(self, data):
        self.data = data

    def __iter__(self):
        self.index = -1
        return self

    def next(self):
        self.index += 1
        try:
            return self.data[self.index]
        except IndexError:
            raise StopIteration

Usage:

>>> well, you get it, it's all the same...

But then you can only have one iterator going at once. OK, in this case you could just do this:

class CheatIter(object):
    def __init__(self, data):
        self.data = data

    def __iter__(self):
        return iter(self.data)

But that's cheating because you are just reusing the __iter__ method of list. An easier way is to use yield, and make __iter__ into a generator:

class Generator(object):
    def __init__(self, data):
        self.data = data

    def __iter__(self):
        for x in self.data:
            yield x

This last is the way I would recommend. Easy and efficient.

Answer 2

X must be iterable. It must implement __iter__() which returns an iterator object; the iterator object must implement next(), which returns next item every time it is called or raises a StopIteration if there's no next item.

Lists, tuples and generators are all iterable.

Note that the plain for operator uses the same mechanism.

Answer 3

Answering question's comments I can say that reading source is not the best idea in this case. The code that is responsible for execution of compiled code (ceval.c) does not seem to be very verbose for a person that sees Python sources for the first time. Here is the snippet that represents iteration in for loops:

   TARGET(FOR_ITER)
        /* before: [iter]; after: [iter, iter()] *or* [] */
        v = TOP();

        /*
          Here tp_iternext corresponds to next() in Python
        */
        x = (*v->ob_type->tp_iternext)(v); 
        if (x != NULL) {
            PUSH(x);
            PREDICT(STORE_FAST);
            PREDICT(UNPACK_SEQUENCE);
            DISPATCH();
        }
        if (PyErr_Occurred()) {
            if (!PyErr_ExceptionMatches(
                            PyExc_StopIteration))
                break;
            PyErr_Clear();
        }
        /* iterator ended normally */
        x = v = POP();
        Py_DECREF(v);
        JUMPBY(oparg);
        DISPATCH();

To find what actually happens here you need to dive into bunch of other files which verbosity is not much better. Thus I think that in such cases documentation and sites like SO are the first place to go while the source should be checked only for uncovered implementation details.

Answer 4

X must be an iterable object, meaning it needs to have an __iter__() method.

So, to start a for..in loop, or a list comprehension, first X's __iter__() method is called to obtain an iterator object; then that object's next() method is called for each iteration until StopIteration is raised, at which point the iteration stops.

I'm not sure what your third question means, and how to provide a meaningful answer to your fourth question except that your iterator should not construct the entire list in memory at once.

Answer 5

Maybe this helps (tutorial http://docs.python.org/tutorial/classes.html Section 9.9):

Behind the scenes, the for statement calls iter() on the container object. The function returns an iterator object that defines the method next() which accesses elements in the container one at a time. When there are no more elements, next() raises a StopIteration exception which tells the for loop to terminate.

Answer 6

To answer your questions:

How does the mechanism behind in works?

It is the exact same mechanism as used for ordinary for loops, as others have already noted.

Which functions\methods within X does it call?

As noted in a comment below, it calls iter(X) to get an iterator. If X has a method function __iter__() defined, this will be called to return an iterator; otherwise, if X defines __getitem__(), this will be called repeatedly to iterate over X. See the Python documentation for iter() here: http://docs.python.org/library/functions.html#iter

If X can comply to more than one method, what's the precedence?

I'm not sure what your question is here, exactly, but Python has standard rules for how it resolves method names, and they are followed here. Here is a discussion of this:

Method Resolution Order (MRO) in new style Python classes

How to write an efficient X, so that list comprehension will be quick?

I suggest you read up more on iterators and generators in Python. One easy way to make any class support iteration is to make a generator function for iter(). Here is a discussion of generators:

http://linuxgazette.net/100/pramode.html