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Extract list from itertools.cycle

I have a class that contains an instance itertools.cyclethat I would like to copy. One approach (the only one I can think of) is to extract the original iterable (which was a list) and keep the position the loop is in.

Unfortunately, I cannot get the list that I used to create the loop instance, and there is no obvious way to do this:

import itertools
c = itertools.cycle([1, 2, 3])
print dir(c)
['__class__', '__delattr__', '__doc__', '__format__', '__getattribute__', 
 '__hash__', '__init__', '__iter__', '__new__', '__reduce__', 
 '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', 
 '__subclasshook__', 'next']

I can find some reasonable reasons why this would be forbidden for some types of input iterations, but for a tuple or maybe even a list (maybe volatility could be a problem), I don’t understand why this would be possible.

Does anyone know if it can be extracted from an infinite iterable from an instance itertools.cycle. If not, does anyone know why this idea is bad?

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3 answers

It's impossible. If you look at the code itertools.cycle, you will see that it does not store a copy of the sequence. It only creates an iteration and saves the values ​​contained in iterable in the newly created list:

static PyObject *
cycle_new(PyTypeObject *type, PyObject *args, PyObject *kwds)
{
    PyObject *it;
    PyObject *iterable;
    PyObject *saved;
    cycleobject *lz;

    if (type == &cycle_type && !_PyArg_NoKeywords("cycle()", kwds))
        return NULL;

    if (!PyArg_UnpackTuple(args, "cycle", 1, 1, &iterable))
        return NULL;
    /* NOTE: they do not store the *sequence*, only the iterator */
    /* Get iterator. */
    it = PyObject_GetIter(iterable);
    if (it == NULL)
        return NULL;

    saved = PyList_New(0);
    if (saved == NULL) {
        Py_DECREF(it);
        return NULL;
    }

    /* create cycleobject structure */
    lz = (cycleobject *)type->tp_alloc(type, 0);
    if (lz == NULL) {
        Py_DECREF(it);
        Py_DECREF(saved);
        return NULL;
    }
    lz->it = it;
    lz->saved = saved;
    lz->firstpass = 0;

    return (PyObject *)lz;
}

This means that when executed:

itertools.cycle([1,2,3])

The created list contains only 1 link, which is stored in the iterator used by the loop. When the iterator is exhausted, the iterator is deleted and a new iterator is created:

    /* taken from the "cycle.next" implementation */
    it = PyObject_GetIter(lz->saved);
    if (it == NULL)
        return NULL;
    tmp = lz->it;
    lz->it = it;
    lz->firstpass = 1;
    Py_DECREF(tmp);   /* destroys the old iterator */

This means that after one cycle, the list is destroyed.

, , - itertools.cycle.

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0

, @Bakuriu , . / itertools.cycle.

I did a subclass of itertools.cycle, which is picklable (with a couple of extra bells and whistles to load).

import itertools


class FiniteCycle(itertools.cycle):
    """
    Cycles the given finite iterable indefinitely. 
    Subclasses ``itertools.cycle`` and adds pickle support.
    """
    def __init__(self, finite_iterable):
        self._index = 0
        self._iterable = tuple(finite_iterable)
        self._iterable_len = len(self._iterable)
        itertools.cycle.__init__(self, self._iterable)

    @property
    def index(self):
        return self._index

    @index.setter
    def index(self, index):
        """
        Sets the current index into the iterable. 
        Keeps the underlying cycle in sync.

        Negative indexing supported (will be converted to a positive index).
        """
        index = int(index)
        if index < 0:
            index = self._iterable_len + index
            if index < 0:
                raise ValueError('Negative index is larger than the iterable length.')

        if index > self._iterable_len - 1:
            raise IndexError('Index is too high for the iterable. Tried %s, iterable '
                             'length %s.' % (index, self._iterable_len))

        # calculate the positive number of times the iterable will need to be moved
        # forward to get to the desired index
        delta = (index + self._iterable_len - self.index) % (self._iterable_len)

        # move the finite cycle on ``delta`` times.
        for _ in xrange(delta):
            self.next()

    def next(self):
        self._index += 1
        if self._index >= self._iterable_len:
            self._index = 0
        return itertools.cycle.next(self)

    def peek(self):
        """
        Return the next value in the cycle without moving the iterable forward.
        """
        return self._iterable[self.index]

    def __reduce__(self):
        return (FiniteCycle, (self._iterable, ), {'index': self.index})

    def __setstate__(self, state):
        self.index = state.pop('index')

Example usage example:

c = FiniteCycle([1, 2, 3])

c.index = -1
print c.next() # prints 3

print [c.next() for _ in xrange(4)] # prints [1, 2, 3, 1]

print c.peek() # prints 2
print c.next() # prints 2

import pickle
import cStringIO
serialised_cycle = pickle.dumps(c)

del c

c = pickle.loads(serialised_cycle)

print c.next() # prints 3
print c.next() # prints 1

Feedback.

Thank,

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