The topic of iterables came up on c.l.py recently. One
of the participants mentioned that "iterable" isn't listed
in the index of either the language or library reference
manuals. A quick search didn't yield any obvious
definition of what an iterable is. (There may be something
I missed. I wasn't terribly thorough in my search.)

The attached patch attempts to fix that omission by adding
a glossary to the language reference manual. Maybe it
should be a separate manual. It doesn't seem like it
belongs in the tutorial, and the library reference manual
doesn't cover the language itself.

Keep, toss, throw darts at, or pass back for action.

S

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Sorry, but I'm going to throw darts at this. You need to have
glossary entries for both 'iterable' and 'iterator', and you're
current definition of 'iterable' is actually the definition
of 'iterator' not of 'iterable'.

Try something like this:

\index{iterable{
\item[iterable] Any object which supports enumeration of a
set of values by calling its \method{iter} which returns
an iterator over those values. Examples include \class{file},
\class{list} and \class{dict} objects. In the case of \class
{dict} objects, iteration is over the keys in the object.

\index{iterator}
\item[iterator] An object which supports enumeration of a
set of values by calling its \method{next} method and which
contains an \method{iter} method which returns the
object itself. Examples: \class{file} is a iterable which is its
own iterator. \class{list} and \class{dict} are iterables which
create iterators of types which are not otherwise visible.

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Agreed. Any glossary with only one entry would be a bit thin.
Thanks for the new entry. :-)

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The wiki was a success and the glossary looks ready for
prime-time. So go ahead and add it (or assign to me).

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Agreed, it has been quite successful. Fred, I'll take this over
if you like, but I'd sort of like a pronouncement about where
the glossary should go. My thought was that it would be an
appendix to the language reference manual.

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I recommend putting it in the tutorial. As it stands now, the
glossary can be profitability read A to Z after completing the
tutorial. It can serve to unify and solidify the ideas
presented up to that point.

The reference manual is more encyclopedic and I think the
glossary would be lost in a sea of entries.

Another alternative is to make it a stand-alone link from the
main page:
Tutorial (start here) Ref Manual
Lib Ref Glossary of Key Concepts

This patch is marked for Py2.4. I recommend that it be
added to Py2.3.1 also.

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I'm going to put this in the tutorial as Raymond suggested. It
would be nice if there was a special \glossaryitem{} environment
that would allow easy linking to glossary entries from other
places in the documentation. I'm not going to let its absence
hold me up. It's just something to consider.

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I checked in an initial glossary for the tutorial. I'm sure it will
need a fair amount of LaTeX work. Fred, please feel free to
ping me on that. I will be happy to do the work with some
guidance from you. One thing I was hoping we could do is
generate links from other documentation into the tutorial, but
I have no idea how well LaTeX and latex2html support inter-
document links. Another (simpler, though tedious) task will
be to "indexify" the tutorial, now that one is being generated.

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Now, the hyperlinks need to be fixed. They are all relative
to the tutorial directory.

Also, consider backporting the glossary to 2.3.2.

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The hyperlinks are now fixed. It's up to Skip if he wants
to maintain a version of this in 2.3.x, but too late for 2.3.2.

Skip, please close this when you're satisfied (with the
state of the glossary).

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The glossary is now part of the 2.3.x and 2.4 trees; closing
this issue.