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Python

Posted by Jason Pallone
Jason Pallone
895 Points

what is a iterable?

So is a iterable just really a string or list? like the = 'house' ... house would be the iterable? Thanks

Nicholas Baker
Nicholas Baker
6,964 Points
Nicholas Baker
Nicholas Baker
6,964 Points

An 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']

2 Answers

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
224,849 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
224,849 Points

The 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
Alexander Davison
65,468 Points
Alexander Davison
Alexander Davison
65,468 Points

An 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! :zap: ~Alex