better documentation for 'finished' for first class iterators

This commit is contained in:
Araq 2015-01-26 22:48:11 +01:00
commit d08cec0f7d
4 changed files with 54 additions and 3 deletions

View file

@ -556,6 +556,40 @@ The builtin ``system.finished`` can be used to determine if an iterator has
finished its operation; no exception is raised on an attempt to invoke an
iterator that has already finished its work.
Note that ``system.finished`` is error prone to use because it only returns
``true`` one iteration after the iterator has finished:
.. code-block:: nim
iterator mycount(a, b: int): int {.closure.} =
var x = a
while x <= b:
yield x
inc x
var c = mycount # instantiate the iterator
while not finished(c):
echo c(1, 3)
# Produces
1
2
3
0
Instead this code has be used:
.. code-block:: nim
var c = mycount # instantiate the iterator
while true:
let value = c(1, 3)
if finished(c): break # and discard 'value'!
echo value
It helps to think that the iterator actually returns a
pair ``(value, done)`` and ``finished`` is used to access the hidden ``done``
field.
Closure iterators are *resumable functions* and so one has to provide the
arguments to every call. To get around this limitation one can capture
parameters of an outer factory proc: