One thing that many find very confusing when they first learn about generators is that once they’re exhausted they’re, erm, exhausted.

Eh?!

Let’s see what this means with an example. Let’s start with a list, first:

numbers = [item for item in range(10)]

# Loop through numbers
for number in numbers:
print(number)

# And let's loop one more time…
for number in numbers:
print(number)

We’ve used a list comprehension to create a list of numbers–it’s not the most exciting list you’ll see, but it will do here

You’re them looping through the list twice, printing out the values each time

Here’s the output from this code:

0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

I did say it’s not an exciting list. I know!

The numbers are printed out twice. Of course they are, since you’ve repeated the loop twice

Let’s see what happens with a generator instead of a list:

# Notice that we've now made this a generator
numbers = (item for item in range(10))

# Loop through numbers
for number in numbers:
print(number)

# And let's loop one more time…
for number in numbers:
print(number)

Notice how we’re now using parentheses (round brackets) instead of square brackets when creating numbers

This creates a generator

If you print(type(numbers)) you’ll get:
<class 'generator'>

and if you print(numbers):
<generator object <genexpr> at 0x103309ff0>

So, what’s the output from the two for loops?

Let’s find out:

0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

The numbers are only printed out once. The generator was “used up” when you looped through it the first time, so you can’t use it again

Here’s why this happens (very abridged version):

A generator doesn’t store the data within it. Instead, it refers to data which is stored or created elsewhere

So, when you try and fetch the first item in numbers, the generator fetches 0 and it now “knows” it’s taken the first value…

So the next time you need a value from numbers, it will get the second one, and so on…

Once it fetches the last item, there’s nothing left
The generator is exhausted
When you try to fetch another item, there’s nothing there

Think of a generator as single-use

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