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Jason Pallone
895 Pointswhat is a iterable?
So is a iterable just really a string or list? like the = 'house' ... house would be the iterable? Thanks
2 Answers
Steven Parker
229,744 PointsThe definition found in the Python Glossary:
Iterable
An object capable of returning its members one at a time. Examples of iterables include all sequence types (such as list, str, and tuple) and some non-sequence types like dict, file objects, and objects of any classes you define with an
__iter__()method or with a__getitem__()method that implements Sequence semantics.
An iterable is most often used to control a "for" loop.
Alexander Davison
65,469 PointsAn iterable is a data structure that can be walked through linearly (called iterating). Examples include strings, lists and tuples. As for dictionaries, you can iterate through it, but you can only iterate through either the keys or the values. (Python supports iterating both at once, true, but it's just syntactic sugar.)
In a nutshell it means that you can run a for loop through it.
I hope this helps! 
Nicholas Baker
6,964 PointsNicholas Baker
6,964 PointsAn iterable is anything that can be iterated or "stepped" through. So a string like "this" is an iterable and so is a list like ['t', 'h', 1, 's']