Foundations Updated 2026-09 View as Markdown

Generators

Generators are very easy to implement, but a bit difficult to understand. Generators are used to create iterators, but with a different approach.

Generators are very easy to implement, but a bit difficult to understand.

Generators are used to create iterators, but with a different approach. Generators are simple functions which return an iterable set of items, one at a time, in a special way.

When an iteration over a set of item starts using the for statement, the generator is run. Once the generator’s function code reaches a “yield” statement, the generator yields its execution back to the for loop, returning a new value from the set. The generator function can generate as many values (possibly infinite) as it wants, yielding each one in its turn.

Here is a simple example of a generator function which returns 7 random integers:

  import random

  def lottery():
      # returns 6 numbers between 1 and 40
      for i in range(6):
          yield random.randint(1, 40)

      # returns a 7th number between 1 and 15
      yield random.randint(1,15)

  for random_number in lottery():
         print("And the next number is... %d!" %(random_number))

This function decides how to generate the random numbers on its own, and executes the yield statements one at a time, pausing in between to yield execution back to the main for loop.

# fill in this function
def fib():
    a, b = 1, 1
    while 1:
        yield a
        a, b = b, a + b

# testing code
import types
if type(fib()) == types.GeneratorType:
    print("Good, The fib function is a generator.")

    counter = 0
    for n in fib():
        print(n)
        counter += 1
        if counter == 10:
            break