pythonpython-3.xgeneratortry-except

try-finally in Python 3 generator


I have met a snippet of Python 3 code:

def gen():
    try:
        while True:
            yield 1
    finally:
        print("stop")

print(next(gen()))

After I run it, I thought at first that the output should be:

1

But actually the result is:

stop
1

How can this happen? What happened under the hood?

If I run for i in gen(): print(i), there will be an infinite loop which is what I expected. What is the difference between for and next here?


Solution

  • The finally clause is being executed on garbage collection of the generator object.

    Consider the following two scenarios:

    def gen():
        try:
            while True:
                yield 1
        finally:
            print("stop")
    
    g1 = gen(); print('first time')
    print(next(g1))
    g2 = gen(); print('second time')  # no stop will be printed because we haven't hit the finally clause yet
    
    def gen():
        try:
            while True:
                yield 1
        finally:
            print("stop")
    
    g = gen(); print('first time')
    print(next(g))
    g = gen(); print('second time')   # stop will be printed when the first object g was assigned to is garbage collected