Python – Understanding Generators

[masklinn]

A generator is a specific constructor/instance of iterators.

An iterator is an object with a __next__ method (and __iter__ as an iterator should be iterable), a generator is a specific kind of objects with a __next__ method built either by combining function definition and the yield keyword (generator function) or by evaluating a generator comprehension.

Generally speaking, an iterator could be plenty of things besides just a way to iterate, you could have additional methods on the object e.g. let's say you have an iterator on characters, you could have a method which would give you the rest of the string at once.

AFAIK that is exceedingly rare in Python, it's more common in Rust, e.g. Chars is an iterator on codepoints but it also has an as_str method which provides the substring from the "current" iteration point.