What is the most pythonic way to have a generator expression executed?

Question

More and more features of Python move to be \"lazy executable\", like generator expressions and other kind of iterators. Sometimes, however, I see myself wanting to roll a o

Answer 1

There are many accumulators which have the effect of consuming the whole iterable they're given, such as min or max -- but even they don't ignore entirely the results yielded in the process (min and max, for example, will raise an exception if some of the results are complex numbers). I don't think there's a built-in accumulator that does exactly what you want -- you'll have to write (and add to your personal stash of tiny utility function) a tiny utility function such as

def consume(iterable):
    for item in iterable: pass

The main reason, I guess, is that Python has a for statement and you're supposed to use it when it fits like a glove (i.e., for the cases you'd want consume for;-).

BTW, a.write returns None, which is falsish, so any will actually consume it (and a.writelines will do even better!). But I realize you were just giving that as an example;-).