Iterable

Iteration is a generic term that describes the procedure for taking elements of something in turn. In a more general sense, it is a sequence of instructions that is repeated a certain number of times or before the specified condition is fulfilled.

An iterable is an object that can return elements one at a time. It is also an object from which an iterator can be derived.

Examples of iterables:

• all sequences: list, string, tuple

• dicts

• files

In Python, the iter function is responsible for getting an iterator:

In [1]: lista = [1, 2, 3]

In [2]: iter(lista)
Out[2]: <list_iterator at 0xb4ede28c>

iter function will work on any object that has __iter__ or __getitem__ method. __iter__ method returns an iterator. If this method is not available, iter function checks if there is __getitem__ method that allows getting elements by index.

If method __getitem__ is present an iterator is returned, which iterates through the elements using index (starting with 0). In practice, the use of __getitem__ means that all sequence elements are iterable objects. For example, a list, a tuple, a string. Although these data types have __iter__ method.