Does readlines() return a list or an iterator in Python 3?

Question

I\'ve read in \"Dive into Python 3\" that \"The readlines() method now returns an iterator, so it is just as efficient as xreadlines() was in Python 2\". See here: http://di

Answer 1

Like this:

Python 3.1.2 (r312:79149, Mar 21 2010, 00:41:52) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
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>>> f = open('/junk/so/foo.txt')
>>> type(f.readlines())

>>> help(f.readlines)
Help on built-in function readlines:

readlines(...)
    Return a list of lines from the stream.

    hint can be specified to control the number of lines read: no more
    lines will be read if the total size (in bytes/characters) of all
    lines so far exceeds hint.

>>>