[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Serhiy Storchaka]

Change by Serhiy Storchaka :


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resolution:  -> fixed
stage: patch review -> resolved
status: open -> closed

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Serhiy Storchaka]

Serhiy Storchaka  added the comment:


New changeset 13a6c098c215921e35004f9d3a9b70f601e56500 by Serhiy Storchaka in 
branch 'master':
bpo-32259: Make a TypeError message when unpack non-iterable more specific. 
(#4903)
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/13a6c098c215921e35004f9d3a9b70f601e56500


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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Camion]

Camion  added the comment:

Ok then. Thank you :-)

It also seemed strange that there were so many messages about int ;-)

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Terry J. Reedy]

Terry J. Reedy  added the comment:

Yes, in the code for the the unpack message test, the specific non-iterable is 
not relevant.  These are not tests of the iter builtin.

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Camion]

Camion  added the comment:

Even in the code !??
I may have missed something, but I based my question on what I read in the pull 
request...

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Terry J. Reedy]

Terry J. Reedy  added the comment:

'int' is a standin for non-iterable and easy to type.

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Camion]

Camion  added the comment:

thank You Serhiy for your C implementation. 

About this question of the dilemma around the meaning of "non iterable int" why 
not simply put the "non iterable" between parenthesis to avoid making it too 
verbose ?

"cannot unpack (non-iterable) int object"
or "cannot unpack int object (not iterable)

However, I wonder why nearly all the changes I've seen, seem to be about int ? 
This situation might arise with any non-iterable type (I got it first with 
Fraction).

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Terry J. Reedy]

Terry J. Reedy  added the comment:

I retested and iter(ob) (1) apparently raises 'not iterable' only when it can 
find neither __iter__ nor __getitem__.  It (2) raises 'non-iterator', as above, 
when it finds  __iter__, calls its, and get a non-iterator.  (3) Exceptions in 
__iter__ are passed through.  (If it finds and wraps __getitem__, errors only 
appear during iteration.)

The current patch for assignment unpacking catches case (1) with 
"v->ob_type->tp_iter == NULL && !PySequence_Check(v))".  Removing this would 
catch case (2) and incidentally case (3) TypeErrors.  Not catching user 
TypeErrors would require looking at the message.  I intentionally am not 
proposing to remove the TypeError check.

Presuming the existence of a PyErr_' function to get exception messages, we 
could simply prefix the existing message with a short 'Cannot unpack. '  The 
same could be done for the other cases in msg307999, but I don't know if they 
are subject to the same need.

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Serhiy Storchaka]

Serhiy Storchaka  added the comment:

Is it worth to emit more specific (but possible uniform) error messages in 
other unpacking cases (see msg307999)?

FYI if a class implements __iter__ which returns non-iterable, the following 
error is raised:

>>> class C:
... def __iter__(self):
... return 1
... 
>>> a, b = C()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
TypeError: iter() returned non-iterator of type 'int'

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Terry J. Reedy]

Terry J. Reedy  added the comment:

In English, 'adjective noun' does not necessarily imply the existence of 
'not-adjective' nouns, and the adjective may serve as a reminder or reason.  
For instance, "This job is too dangerous for mortal humans!"

In the current context, failure of 'iter(ob)', by itself, only tells us that 
the particular object ob is not iterable. "'X' object is not iterable", rather 
that "'X' objects are not iterable", is correct.  (Ditto for other messages.)

That said, I think "cannot unpack int object, because not iterable" is better.

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Serhiy Storchaka]

Serhiy Storchaka  added the comment:

> I would add 'non-iterable', to get "cannot unpack non-iterable int object", 
> to tell people what is needed instead.

Doesn't this imply that there are iterable int objects which can be unpacked?

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Terry J. Reedy]

Terry J. Reedy  added the comment:

Thanks, Serhiy, for the C implementation, and Eric for reviewing it.  I would 
add 'non-iterable', to get "cannot unpack non-iterable int object", to tell 
people what is needed instead.  I do think this worthwhile.

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Eric V. Smith]

Eric V. Smith  added the comment:

The PR looks okay to me. I'm also not sure it's worth the change, though.

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Serhiy Storchaka]

Serhiy Storchaka  added the comment:

PR 4903 makes the error message more specific for this case.

>>> a, b = 1
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
TypeError: cannot unpack int object

I don't know whether it is worth to do this change.

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Serhiy Storchaka]

Change by Serhiy Storchaka :


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pull_requests: +4798
stage: needs patch -> patch review

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Camion]

Camion  added the comment:

Jerry, I've been troubleshooting thing for 30 years and I'm quite experienced 
at it, and in the end I was perfectly able to manage this problem and solve 
this problem by myself. 

My point is not about my own difficulty to solve this problem, but about the 
fact that an information was lacking clarity in a language which claims that 
things must be told. You mention the fact that Steven suggested playing playing 
around with simplified code, but it's not what Steven suggested. Steven 
suggested to make the example simpler, and I replied him that this example was 
not chosen to describe the programming situation but illustrate the 
troubleshooting situation and provide a good way to show how a real situation 
might be problematic to analyse with this message - and Steven confirmed that 
he was also put out on a wrong track by this message. 

For sure, when you are an experienced programmer, you will develop a different 
way to understand this. My point is that it seems to go in contradiction with 
"Python's Zen".

You suggest that I should have split the packing and the unpacking on two 
separate lines. Ok, but this is an easy suggestion to make _when you already 
know the cause of the problem_. Each language has it's programming culture and; 
Ok, I'm new here but I haven't seen any recommendation going in that direction. 
On the contrary all the sample code and course I have seen on that topic 
encourage young programmer not to use this practice - and I believe it would be 
simpler to find a way to adapt the error message to make things clear that such 
an error can also arise for unpacking reasons (whatever the way you word it), 
than to change the programming/training culture around python.

I have been made multiple propositions to re-word this message, and Steven also 
made some. My last proposition was motivated by the idea of keeping the message 
short. Some other were longer. One might also write : "not iterable (this 
problem may sometimes arise from unpacking)" or something else.

The point is that in many situation, the problem comes from a mismatching 
between the number of values packed and the number of destination positions for 
unpacking; and in this case, you have a ValueError message stating clearly what 
happens. 

Only in this case, when the fact that you had only one value and didn't see it, 
makes that you no longer have an iterable type - do you get a TypeError. And 
Ok, I agree with Serhiy that the type of exception is correct, but I believe 
that the whole situation is misleading and should be corrected.

(I apologize for my long sentences : My mother tongue is french and it's not 
always easy for me to to make them short like you do in English XD )

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Terry J. Reedy]

Terry J. Reedy  added the comment:

I think generically changing 'iterable' to 'iterable/unpackable' is wrong and 
would engender more confusion than at present.  Most uses of iteration have 
nothing to do with multiple assignment target unpacking.  Some minimal examples 
resulting in "TypeError: 'int' object is not iterable", where this change would 
be wrong, include

iter(1)
sorted(1)
for _ in 1: pass

What might be reasonable is to wrap iter(source) in multiple assignment target 
code with (the C equivalent, if it exists, of) try-except and augment the 
message before re-raising.  The addition could be something explicit like "and 
cannot be the source for multiple target assignment".

---
Camion, Steven gave you excellent advice about playing around with simplified 
code.  If you had split the multiple-operation error raising line,

for term, dgts in terms_generator(expected_precision):

into two simpler lines that each do less,

for value in terms_generator(expected_precision):
term, dgts = value

you would have likely have spent much less time looking in the wrong place.  
Isolating possible exception sources is a very useful debugging tool.

--
nosy: +terry.reedy

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Camion]

Camion  added the comment:

Woops, my mistake... I fumbled this one : the file was empty

--
keywords: +patch
Added file: 
https://bugs.python.org/file47330/issue-32259-iterable-unpackable.patch

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Camion]

Camion  added the comment:

Well I submitted a patch, but I don't see it anywhere on this page.. Is this 
normal ?

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Camion]

Camion  added the comment:

@Raymond: I know that you have no obligation to make changes just because I'm 
demanding them and that's why I'm just trying to convince people of the 
validity of my observations, here. 
I apologize if my tone may seem "insistent", but please take in account than 
English is not my mother tongue.
 
I agree with the fact that part of learning a language is learning to reason 
from error message to root cause but I cannot ignore that Python's Zen asks for 
explicitness, and Steven agreed with that this situation was tricky to 
interpret.

It would be sly to suggest I'm be looking for vindication for one of my own 
programming errors. I'm experienced enough in trouble-shooting to have solved 
it by myself. It's just that I do not believe normal that this situation took 
me so much time and energy to solve from the error message **in regard with 
other similar situations**.



@David : What other contexts are you talking about ? Instead of looking in the 
documentation which also talks about e.g.:unpacking archive files, You should 
probably grep the source code for strings containing the word unpack and it 
will show you that the word unpack is used in contexts fully related with the 
error in my example.
(SEARCH='".*unpack.*"'; find -name '*.c' -print0 | xargs -0 grep -li "$SEARCH" 
| while read F; do echo "$F" | sed 'p;s/./-/g'; grep -niC 5 "$SEARCH" "$F"; 
done) | less



I don't know about what would be the right error message, but since I 
experimented on in and Serhiy asked for it, I made a sample patch on version 
3.6.3 which contains all the change which I believe, would be required.

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Serhiy Storchaka]

Serhiy Storchaka  added the comment:

Camion, the problem is not in the error message. The problem is in the complex 
expression that produces an error. If you have a complex expression you always 
have a change to misidentify the source of error. In your case the expression 
contains two implicit iter() invocations.

I have looked at the code. It is possible to make the error message in this 
case more specific. There are precedences of this when pass wrong type as 
var-positional or var-keyword arguments:

>>> print(*1)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
TypeError: print() argument after * must be an iterable, not int
>>> print(**1)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
TypeError: print() argument after ** must be a mapping, not int

In the following cases the error message is general. It is possible to make it 
more specific.

>>> a, b = 1
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
TypeError: 'int' object is not iterable
>>> [*1]
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
TypeError: 'int' object is not iterable
>>> {*1}
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
TypeError: 'int' object is not iterable
>>> {**1}
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
TypeError: 'int' object is not a mapping

But PyObject_GetIter() is called in 88 places in CPython core and extensions. 
In all these cases we can make error messages more specific. But I have large 
doubts that it is worth to do. And I'm not sure even about the above examples.

If somebody provide a patch we could discuss it (I'm not sure it will be 
accepted at end).

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Raymond Hettinger]

Raymond Hettinger  added the comment:

@Camion, please adopt a less insistent tone.  We've devoting time and thought 
to your concerns but are under no obligation to make a change just because you 
are demanding it.  

Part of learning any programming language is learning to reason from error 
message to root cause.  Good error messages help, but they don't eliminate the 
underlying not always comfortable path of learning the world-view of the 
language and its mechanisms.  That is partly why the devguide includes this 
passage, "Be careful accepting requests for documentation changes from the rare 
but vocal category of reader who is looking for vindication for one of their 
programming errors".

A instructor for several thousand engineers, I've not encountered a single case 
where the current message has been problematic, nor have we had tracker issue 
arise over Python's 27 year history.  And so far all the proposed wording 
changes make the message less accurate in other contexts where the message 
might arise. Based on that and on the comments by the other respondents, it 
would reasonable to close this issue.

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[R. David Murray]

R. David Murray  added the comment:

I shouldn't have searched the docs for 'unpackable', I should have searched for 
'unpack'.  Doing that reveals that the term 'unpack' is used for other 
concepts, whereas the term 'iterable' is precise.  So I think it would 
unacceptably lower the precision of the error message to add that word.

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[R. David Murray]

R. David Murray  added the comment:

> How about "[TYPE] object is not iterable/unpackable"

I just grepped the docs, and the term 'unpackable' does not appear anywhere in 
them.  I don't think this would be an improvement.

As for the earlier suggestion of adding "expected tuple" does not work, because 
it is not a tuple being expected, it is an iterable, and saying "expected 
iterable" would be redundant with saying "is not iterable".

What about "TypeError: expected iterable but found "?  That's parallel to 
some other type error messages we already generate.  Would that be any clearer? 
 (I'm not sure it would be, it says the same thing.)

--
nosy: +r.david.murray

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Camion]

Camion  added the comment:

@Serhiy : I asked you to explain by what mean you supported the affirmation 
that our feeling (that the current message can be misleading in the specific 
situation) is wrong, but you didn't give us any element to understand your 
position. Steven and I did it: I gave you a sample code showing how and why a 
situation could be misinterpreted in regard of the current message, and Steven 
explained that as an experience python programmer, he experienced the same 
misunderstanding (I'm also an experienced programmer: started in the eighties, 
I'm new in Python only).

May be, if you gave us some sound argument element, we could also better 
understand the reason why you affirm that our feeling is wrong. Because in the 
current situation, you only declared your own feeling, but didn't give it any 
support, and all we can conclude is that you are a very experienced python 
programmer who can understand what was beyond the text of the message, but it 
seems in contradiction with the principle of making things clear.



@Raymond : I do not understand how you make the link between both your 
affirmations. The initial problem is related with the fact that in some 
situation, the error message lead to think that there is a problem with the 
loop/generator/iterator, where the problem is in reality with a simple type 
which cannot be unpacked or iterated. 

Let's assume that the interpreter could never make the difference. In what way, 
does it support the fact that the message shouldn't in any way, hint the 
programmer on the fact that the problem is not with the 
generator/iterator/loop, but with the returned type ?



@Steven (& everybody), 
How about : "[TYPE] object is not iterable/unpackable" ?



About patching the sources in c, the message "object is not iterable" appears 
in four places in the version 3.6.3 : in ./Objects/object.c:1023, twice in 
./Objects/typeobject.c (lines 6329 & 6344), and in ./Objects/abstract.c:3135. I 
have patched them to make them recognizable from one another, and it appear 
that all observed messages have been generated from abstract.c:3135 (in 3.6.3) 
and not from the other lines.

This poses problem, because not even the regression test show a case where 
those other 3 parts of the code are used, and I haven't figured out (yet?) what 
condition makes them occur.

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Serhiy Storchaka]

Serhiy Storchaka  added the comment:

My objections were about the original report. The title of this issue still 
implies there is a bug that is not true. You proposition Steve may  make sense, 
but we need a concrete code for discussing the advantages and the drawbacks of 
this change.

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Raymond Hettinger]

Raymond Hettinger  added the comment:

I think the current error message should stay as is.  The interpreter is in no 
position to guess what kind of iterable may have been intended.

--
nosy: +rhettinger

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Steven D'Aprano]

Steven D'Aprano  added the comment:

On Sun, Dec 10, 2017 at 10:00:27AM +, Camion wrote:

> Understanding that, I suggest to simply add "(expected 'tuple')" at the end 
> of the message.
> ex : TypeError: 'int' object is not iterable (expected 'tuple')

That is incorrect: a tuple is not expected. Any iterable (sequence, 
iterator, tuple, list, set, frozenset, dict, etc) will do. One thing we 
should not do is give a misleading, overly-specific message that implies 
only a tuple will work.

We could say 

TypeError: 'int' object is not iterable (expected iterable)

but that's redundants, since the comment in the parentheses is implied 
by the fact that *not* being iterable is an error.

I think the right thing to do here (if possible!) is to distinguish 
between unpacking and other iteration. E.g.

for x in 20: ... 
=> TypeError: 'int' object is not iterable

a, b = 20
=> TypeError: cannot unpack 'int' object (not iterable)

or similar. I'm less concerned about the exact wording than the fact 
that we give a hint that it was the unpacking operation that failed, 
rather than iteration in some other context.

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Steven D'Aprano]

Steven D'Aprano  added the comment:

On Sun, Dec 10, 2017 at 09:15:16AM +, Serhiy Storchaka wrote:
> My point is that the current error message is correct and is not misleading. 

With respect Serhiy, in this bug report you have TWO PEOPLE who have 
said that it is misleading in this context -- the person who raised the 
bug report, and me. It might not be misleading to you, but it mislead 
us. I've been using Python for over a decade and a half, and when I read 
the exception it confused me too: why is the for loop trying to iterate 
over a Fraction? Did the generator accidentally call return instead of 
yield?

I was especially confused because I was expecting a ValueError too 
many/too few values to unpack.

Of course, with a bit more thought I realised that the error isn't 
generated by the for loop, but the unpacking. 15 years of reading 
exceptions does count for something :-)

If you prefer "lacking sufficient information" over misleading, I won't 
disagree. Putting aside pointless quibbles over the exact wording of 
*why* the current error message is suboptimal, I hope that we can all 
agree that if the error occurs during an unpacking operation, the error 
message should preferably say that the object cannot be unpacked. Is 
there any advantage to not giving that information if we can?

> And this is a standard error message raised in many other cases. There 
> is no a bug.

I agreed that it isn't a bug, and changed this to an enhancement. Better 
error messages should be welcomed, not rejected because they aren't 
fixing a bug.

> *Maybe* it can be improved in some specific cases. Do you want to 
> provide a patch Steven? Without concrete patch the following 
> discussion doesn't make sense. We even don't know if such patch is 
> possible.

Someone who knows C and the interpreter internals better than me will 
have to provide a patch. I wouldn't even know where to start looking. 
But my guess would be the UNPACK_SEQUENCE op-code.

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Camion]

Camion  added the comment:

Serhiy, I think I got a better understanding of what is happening. It is well 
described by the following example :

>>> a, b = 1,

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
a, b = 1,
ValueError: need more than 1 value to unpack
>>> a, b = 1

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in 
a, b = 1
TypeError: 'int' object is not iterable

Again, the message might be correct, but in this case, the combination between 
the message and the ambiguous syntax, makes it lack from explicitness.

Understanding that, I suggest to simply add "(expected 'tuple')" at the end of 
the message.
ex : TypeError: 'int' object is not iterable (expected 'tuple')

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Serhiy Storchaka]

Serhiy Storchaka  added the comment:

My point is that the current error message is correct and is not misleading. 
And this is a standard error message raised in many other cases. There is no a 
bug.

*Maybe* it can be improved in some specific cases. Do you want to provide a 
patch Steven? Without concrete patch the following discussion doesn't make 
sense. We even don't know if such patch is possible.

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versions:  -Python 3.6

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Camion]

Camion  added the comment:

By the way, I guess if the problem arises like that, it's because it might be 
hard to distinguish both situations at the interpreter level, but if it was 
possible, it would be the best solution to have a different error message (even 
if I understand we should be very careful with the idea of changing the 
exception type, even in this case).

I mean : Eric shown an equivalent error, but both are only equivalent at the 
present discrimination level of the interpreter & language grammar.  I 
understand that distinguishing both those semantically different situation 
might be opening the Pandora box and it might be a bad idea... or not.

The point is that, if ever both those situations were in some way 
distinguishable, then... well... we certainly have no idea of how much code 
confronted with this specific situation AND treated it with exception handling, 
BUT, we might make the assumption that a frequent confrontation with this case 
would then already have been raised before, and consequently, it might be 
relevant, at least to keep it in mind for a future evolution (4.0) of the 
language.

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Camion]

Camion  added the comment:

I wrote it like that on purpose, Steven : My goal was not to show the message 
itself which (I believe) was sufficiently described in the explanation, but to 
show how hard it might be to understand the mistake in regard with the error 
message, even here, with a real life but not outrageously complicated code. :-)

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Steven D'Aprano]

Steven D'Aprano  added the comment:

I agree with Camion that the error message is misleading, and not just for 
beginners. It threw me for a loop too, when I first read it.

Serhiy is right, the exception type cannot and should not be changed, but we 
can change the error message. I'm re-opening the ticket as an enhancement to 
improve the message.

Here's my suggestion:

TypeError: cannot unpack object ('Fraction' is not iterable)

There is no stability guarantees on error messages, so we can include it in 3.6 
(and possibly older if desired).

By the way Camion, as interesting as your program to calculate the digits of pi 
is, in general it is better to cut the code down to the simplest version that 
demonstrates the problem. Something like this would demonstrate it equally as 
well:

def gen():
yield 1

for x, y in gen():
pass

--
nosy: +steven.daprano
resolution: not a bug -> 
stage: resolved -> needs patch
status: closed -> open
type: behavior -> enhancement
versions: +Python 3.7

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Camion]

Camion  added the comment:

I'm not talking about changing the type of the exception, Serhiy. but only to 
make the text message more explicit by adding a lead to a secondary possible 
cause. I do not understand how this addition would be misleading - more than 
the case I presented ? (Did you check my example ?)

I agree that this message might possibly make my mistake obvious to an senior 
_python_ programmer, but doesn't the constraint of being _experienced in 
python_, not go in contradiction with the mantra "Explicit is better than 
implicit" ?

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Serhiy Storchaka]

Serhiy Storchaka  added the comment:

I concur with Eric. The current exception is correct and allows to identify 
your mistake. Changing the type of the exception will break an existing code, 
and the message proposed by you is misleading.

--
nosy: +serhiy.storchaka
status: open -> closed

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Camion]

Camion  added the comment:

Ok, but the other explanation is valid as well. That's why I suggest to modify 
the error message like this : 


TypeError: '[TYPE]' object is not iterable
- OR -
ValueError: not enough values to unpack (expected [N], got 1)

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Eric V. Smith]

Eric V. Smith  added the comment:

The error message is correct, but I'm sorry it's confusing.

Here's an equivalent error:

a, b = 3

You'll get the error "TypeError: 'int' object is not iterable". That's because 
Python sees 2 items to the left of the assignment, so it needs to extract 2 
items from the right side. To get 2 values from the right side, it iterates 
over the right side. In this case, 3 cannot be iterated over, thus the error 
message.

Now consider:

a, b = 3, 4

Again, to get 2 items from the right side, Python iterates over it. In this 
case the thing on the right side is a 2 element tuple. It's a little confusing 
that it's a tuple because it doesn't have parentheses, but the comma between 3 
and 4 makes it a tuple. In this case, Python can iterate over the tuple, and 
the tuple has exactly 2 elements, so the assignment to a and b succeeds with a 
= 3 and b = 4.

I hope that clears it up.

--
nosy: +eric.smith
resolution:  -> not a bug
stage:  -> resolved
status: open -> closed

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[issue32259] Misleading "not iterable" Error Message when generator return a "simple" type, and a tuple is expected

[Camion]

New submission from Camion :

I'm new with Python and I've been blocked for day on a "TypeError: 'Fraction' 
object is not iterable" error message, while the problem turned out to be 
completely different.

I don't even know to what programming case this message would have been the 
right interpretation, but in this situation, it was completely wrong and I 
believe it can cause much loss of time for inexperienced python programmer (at 
least, I believe it should document alternative causes)

Here is a sample code to show how misleading it can be (It's a program to 
compute pi with fractions)

from fractions import Fraction


def order(x):
r, old_r, n, old_n = 2, 1, 1, 0
while (x>=r):
r, old_r, n, old_n = r*r, r, 2*n, n
return order(x >> old_n) + old_n if old_n > 0 else 0


def terms(m, n, i):
return Fraction(4 * m, n**(2*i+1) * (2*i+1))


def terms_generator(exp_prec):
ws = [ [terms(parm[1], parm[2], 0), 0] + list(parm)
  for parm in ((1, 44, 57),
   (1, 7, 239),
   (-1, 12, 682),
   (1, 24, 12943))]
digits = 0
while digits

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