Book Image

Secret Recipes of the Python Ninja

Book Image

Secret Recipes of the Python Ninja

Overview of this book

This book covers the unexplored secrets of Python, delve into its depths, and uncover its mysteries. You’ll unearth secrets related to the implementation of the standard library, by looking at how modules actually work. You’ll understand the implementation of collections, decimals, and fraction modules. If you haven’t used decorators, coroutines, and generator functions much before, as you make your way through the recipes, you’ll learn what you’ve been missing out on. We’ll cover internal special methods in detail, so you understand what they are and how they can be used to improve the engineering decisions you make. Next, you’ll explore the CPython interpreter, which is a treasure trove of secret hacks that not many programmers are aware of. We’ll take you through the depths of the PyPy project, where you’ll come across several exciting ways that you can improve speed and concurrency. Finally, we’ll take time to explore the PEPs of the latest versions to discover some interesting hacks.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Foreword
Contributors
Preface
Index

Using generator functions


Generators allow you to declare a function that operates like an iterator. This allows you to write a custom function that can be used in a for loop or an other iteration capacity. The key feature of a generator is that it yields a value, rather than using return.

When a generator function is called, it returns an iterator known as a generator. This generator controls the operation of the generator function. When the generator is called, the function proceeds like normal but, when the logic flow reaches the yield statement, processing is suspended while returning the first evaluation.

During the suspension, the local state of the function is retained in memory; it's just like a normal function was paused in completing its processing. When the generator is resumed by calling it again, it continues as if nothing happened, returns the next evaluation value, and suspends again. This continues until all the values to be processed are completed, at which point a StopIteration...