On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 7:43 PM, Jim Mooney <cybervigila...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's a peeve of mine about Python help - it often has zero examples.
> I printed help(zip) to see what it does and got this:
>
> Return a zip object whose .__next__() method returns a tuple where
> | the i-th element comes from the i-th iterable argument. The .__next__()
> | method continues until the shortest iterable in the argument sequence
> | is exhausted and then it raises StopIteration.
>
> Not understandable right off, IMHO, unless you're already hardcore.
> Okay, I figured it out by running it with some iterables, so I didn't
> have to google around looking for examples. It would have saved time
> if there was just one example of what you would get from running
> next() on a zip or number lists a few times, since it's a simple
> concept. I'm coming from Jquery, which is chock full of examples, so
> everyone from bankers to pimps (if there is a difference) can use it.
> I think the name is confusing zip with compacting, too.
>
> Although to be fair.
> choosing_nth_item_from_parallel_sequences_until_there_is_no_match_on_n()
> might be too much typing compared to zip() ;')
A short explanation might be
Iterate on arguments, if all return something yield whatever we
got, otherwise stop iterating.
But anyways, instead of using the built-in docs, refer to the
human-friendly documentation available on the web:
http://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html?highlight=zip#zip
Downloads for those docs, if you believe this would be more convenient
for you, are available at http://docs.python.org/2/download.html and
http://docs.python.org/3/download.html (for Python 2 and 3
respectively)
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