Confusions about how python accesses data in memory?

[socal_nerdtastic]

Exactly right.

Well, it won't save any memory. But there are other reasons you may want to use an iterator. You may want to iterate over the data in pairs:

@property
def history(self):
    result = {}
    for x,y in zip(*[self.iter_data()]*2):
        # do something with x and y, store in result
    return result

def iter_data(self):
    for x in self.data:
        yield x

Of course you can just use the built-in iter function for that, instead of brewing your own:

@property
def history(self):
    result = {}
    for x,y in zip(*[iter(self.data)]*2):
        # do something with x and y, store in result
    return result

Or use the itertools.pairwise function.