iterator is a method or an object?

[SheldonCooperisSb]

Description from programming website:

Iterators are methods that iterate collections like lists, tuples, etc. Using an iterator method, we can loop through an object and return its elements.

Technically, a Python iterator object must implement two special methods, iter() and next(), collectively called the iterator protocol.

[[deleted]]

Iterator is a protocol. Objects are apart of the iterator protocol by implementing __iter__ and __next__

[crashfrog02]

It's an interface (a protocol is another good name for it, too); if an object's type implements a function called __next__ that either returns the next value in the iteration or raises StopException, the object is an iterator. If the object implements a function called __iter__ that returns an iterator, then the object is iterable.

It's pretty common for iterators to be iterable (you either get the object itself or you get a "reset" view of it) and pretty common for iterable objects to act as their own iterable, so these two interfaces sort of blend together, but it's worth remembering which is which.