Python Generator

Hacking
David Beazley
http://www.dabeaz.com

Presented at USENIX Technical Conference

San Diego, June 2009

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 1

Introduction
• At PyCon'2008 (Chicago), I gave a popular
tutorial on generator functions
http://www.dabeaz.com/generators

• At PyCon'2009 (Chicago), I followed it up

with a tutorial on coroutines (a related topic)
http://www.dabeaz.com/coroutines

• This tutorial is a kind of "mashup"

• Details from both, but not every last bit
Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 2
 Goals
• Take a look at Python generator functions
• A feature of Python often overlooked, but
which has a large number of practical uses
• Especially for programmers who would be
likely to attend a USENIX conference
• So, my main goal is to take this facet of
Python, shed some light on it, and show how
it's rather "nifty."

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 3

Support Files

• Files used in this tutorial are available here:

http://www.dabeaz.com/usenix2009/generators/

• Go there to follow along with the examples

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 4

 Disclaimer

• This isn't meant to be an exhaustive tutorial

on every possible use of generators and
related theory
• Will mostly go through a series of examples
• You'll have to consult Python documentation
for some of the more subtle details

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 5

Part I
Introduction to Iterators and Generators

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 6

 Iteration
• As you know, Python has a "for" statement
• You use it to iterate over a collection of items
>>> for x in [1,4,5,10]:
... print x,
...
1 4 5 10
>>>

• And, as you have probably noticed, you can

iterate over many different kinds of objects
(not just lists)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 7

Iterating over a Dict

• If you iterate over a dictionary you get keys
>>> prices = { 'GOOG' : 490.10,
... 'AAPL' : 145.23,
... 'YHOO' : 21.71 }
...
>>> for key in prices:
... print key
...
YHOO
GOOG
AAPL
>>>

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 8

 Iterating over a String
• If you iterate over a string, you get characters
>>> s = "Yow!"
>>> for c in s:
... print c
...
Y
o
w
!
>>>

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 9

Iterating over a File

• If you iterate over a file you get lines
>>> for line in open("real.txt"):
... print line,
...
Real Programmers write in FORTRAN

Maybe they do now,

in this decadent era of
Lite beer, hand calculators, and "user-friendly" software
but back in the Good Old Days,
when the term "software" sounded funny
and Real Computers were made out of drums and vacuum tubes,
Real Programmers wrote in machine code.
Not FORTRAN. Not RATFOR. Not, even, assembly language.
Machine Code.
Raw, unadorned, inscrutable hexadecimal numbers.
Directly.

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 10

 Consuming Iterables
• Many functions consume an "iterable"
• Reductions:
sum(s), min(s), max(s)

• Constructors
list(s), tuple(s), set(s), dict(s)

• in operator
item in s

• Many others in the library

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 11

Iteration Protocol
• The reason why you can iterate over different
objects is that there is a specific protocol
>>> items = [1, 4, 5]
>>> it = iter(items)
>>> it.next()
1
>>> it.next()
4
>>> it.next()
5
>>> it.next()
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
StopIteration
>>>

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 12

 Iteration Protocol
• An inside look at the for statement
for x in obj:
# statements

• Underneath the covers

_iter = obj.__iter__() # Get iterator object
while 1:
try:
x = _iter.next() # Get next item
except StopIteration: # No more items
break
# statements
...

• Any object that implements this programming

convention is said to be "iterable"

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 13

Supporting Iteration
• User-defined objects can support iteration
• Example: a "countdown" object
>>> for x in countdown(10):
... print x,
...
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
>>>

• To do this, you just have to make the object

implement the iteration protocol

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 14

 Supporting Iteration
• One implementation
class countdown(object):
def __init__(self,start):
self.count = start
def __iter__(self):
return self
def next(self):
if self.count <= 0:
raise StopIteration
r = self.count
self.count -= 1
return r

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 15

Iteration Example

• Example use:
>>> c = countdown(5)
>>> for i in c:
... print i,
...
5 4 3 2 1
>>>

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 16

 Supporting Iteration
• Sometimes iteration gets implemented using a
pair of objects (an "iterable" and an "iterator")
class countdown(object):
def __init__(self,start):
self.count = start
def __iter__(self):
return countdown_iter(self.count)

def countdown_iter(object):
def __init__(self,count):
self.count = count
def next(self):
if self.count <= 0:
raise StopIteration
r = self.count
self.count -= 1
return r

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 17

Iteration Example
• Having a separate "iterator" allows for
nested iteration on the same object
>>> c = countdown(5)
>>> for i in c:
... for j in c:
... print i,j
...
5 5
5 4
5 3
5 2
...
1 3
1 2
1 1
>>>

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 18

 Iteration Commentary

• There are many subtle details involving the

design of iterators for various objects
• However, we're not going to cover that
• This isn't a tutorial on "iterators"
• We're talking about generators...

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 19

Generators
• A generator is a function that produces a
sequence of results instead of a single value
def countdown(n):
while n > 0:
yield n
n -= 1
>>> for i in countdown(5):
... print i,
...
5 4 3 2 1
>>>

• Instead of returning a value, you generate a

series of values (using the yield statement)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 20

 Generators
• Behavior is quite different than normal func
• Calling a generator function creates an
generator object. However, it does not start
running the function.
def countdown(n):
print "Counting down from", n
while n > 0:
yield n
n -= 1 Notice that no
output was
>>> x = countdown(10) produced
>>> x
<generator object at 0x58490>
>>>

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 21

Generator Functions
• The function only executes on next()
>>> x = countdown(10)
>>> x
<generator object at 0x58490>
>>> x.next()
Counting down from 10 Function starts
10 executing here
>>>

• yield produces a value, but suspends the function

• Function resumes on next call to next()
>>> x.next()
9
>>> x.next()
8
>>>

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 22

 Generator Functions

• When the generator returns, iteration stops

>>> x.next()
1
>>> x.next()
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
StopIteration
>>>

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 23

Generator Functions

• A generator function is mainly a more

convenient way of writing an iterator
• You don't have to worry about the iterator
protocol (.next, .__iter__, etc.)
• It just works

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 24

 Generators vs. Iterators
• A generator function is slightly different
than an object that supports iteration
• A generator is a one-time operation. You
can iterate over the generated data once,
but if you want to do it again, you have to
call the generator function again.
• This is different than a list (which you can
iterate over as many times as you want)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 25

Digression : List Processing

• If you've used Python for awhile, you know that
it has a lot of list-processing features
• One feature, in particular, is quite useful
• List comprehensions
>>> a = [1,2,3,4]
>>> b = [2*x for x in a]
>>> b
[2, 4, 6, 8]
>>>

• Creates a new list by applying an operation to

all elements of another sequence
Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 26
 List Comprehensions
• A list comprehension can also filter
>>> a = [1, -5, 4, 2, -2, 10]
>>> b = [2*x for x in a if x > 0]
>>> b
[2,8,4,20]
>>>

• Another example (grep)

>>> f = open("stockreport","r")
>>> goog = [line for line in f if 'GOOG' in line]
>>>

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 27

List Comprehensions
• General syntax
[expression for x in s if condition]

• What it means
result = []
for x in s:
if condition:
result.append(expression)

• Can be used anywhere a sequence is expected

>>> a = [1,2,3,4]
>>> sum([x*x for x in a])
30
>>>

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 28

 List Comp: Examples
• List comprehensions are hugely useful
• Collecting the values of a specific field
stocknames = [s['name'] for s in stocks]

• Performing database-like queries

a = [s for s in stocks if s['price'] > 100
and s['shares'] > 50 ]

• Quick mathematics over sequences

cost = sum([s['shares']*s['price'] for s in stocks])

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 29

Generator Expressions
• A generated version of a list comprehension
>>> a = [1,2,3,4]
>>> b = (2*x for x in a)
>>> b
<generator object at 0x58760>
>>> for i in b: print b,
...
2 4 6 8
>>>

• This loops over a sequence of items and applies

an operation to each item
• However, results are produced one at a time
using a generator
Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 30
 Generator Expressions
• Important differences from a list comp.
• Does not construct a list.

• Only useful purpose is iteration

• Once consumed, can't be reused

• Example:
>>> a = [1,2,3,4]
>>> b = [2*x for x in a]
>>> b
[2, 4, 6, 8]
>>> c = (2*x for x in a)
<generator object at 0x58760>
>>>

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 31

Generator Expressions

• General syntax
(expression for x in s if condition)

• What it means
for x in s:
if condition:
yield expression

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 32

 A Note on Syntax
• The parens on a generator expression can
dropped if used as a single function argument
• Example:
sum(x*x for x in s)

Generator expression

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 33

Interlude
• There are two basic blocks for generators
• Generator functions:
def countdown(n):
while n > 0:
yield n
n -= 1

• Generator expressions
squares = (x*x for x in s)

• In both cases, you get an object that

generates values (which are typically
consumed in a for loop)
Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 34
 Part 2
Processing Data Files

(Show me your Web Server Logs)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 35

Programming Problem
Find out how many bytes of data were
transferred by summing up the last column
of data in this Apache web server log
81.107.39.38 - ... "GET /ply/ HTTP/1.1" 200 7587
81.107.39.38 - ... "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 133
81.107.39.38 - ... "GET /ply/bookplug.gif HTTP/1.1" 200 23903
81.107.39.38 - ... "GET /ply/ply.html HTTP/1.1" 200 97238
81.107.39.38 - ... "GET /ply/example.html HTTP/1.1" 200 2359
66.249.72.134 - ... "GET /index.html HTTP/1.1" 200 4447

Oh yeah, and the log file might be huge (Gbytes)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 36

 The Log File
• Each line of the log looks like this:
81.107.39.38 - ... "GET /ply/ply.html HTTP/1.1" 200 97238

• The number of bytes is the last column

bytestr = line.rsplit(None,1)[1]

• It's either a number or a missing value (-)

81.107.39.38 - ... "GET /ply/ HTTP/1.1" 304 -

• Converting the value

if bytestr != '-':
bytes = int(bytestr)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 37

A Non-Generator Soln
• Just do a simple for-loop
wwwlog = open("access-log")
total = 0
for line in wwwlog:
bytestr = line.rsplit(None,1)[1]
if bytestr != '-':
total += int(bytestr)

print "Total", total

• We read line-by-line and just update a sum

• However, that's so 90s...
Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 38
 A Generator Solution
• Let's solve it using generator expressions
wwwlog = open("access-log")
bytecolumn = (line.rsplit(None,1)[1] for line in wwwlog)
bytes = (int(x) for x in bytecolumn if x != '-')

print "Total", sum(bytes)

• Whoa! That's different!

• Less code
• A completely different programming style
Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 39

Generators as a Pipeline
• To understand the solution, think of it as a data
processing pipeline

access-log wwwlog bytecolumn bytes sum() total

• Each step is defined by iteration/generation

wwwlog = open("access-log")
bytecolumn = (line.rsplit(None,1)[1] for line in wwwlog)
bytes = (int(x) for x in bytecolumn if x != '-')

print "Total", sum(bytes)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 40

 Being Declarative
• At each step of the pipeline, we declare an
operation that will be applied to the entire
input stream
access-log wwwlog bytecolumn bytes sum() total

bytecolumn = (line.rsplit(None,1)[1] for line in wwwlog)

This operation gets applied to

every line of the log file

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 41

Being Declarative

• Instead of focusing on the problem at a

line-by-line level, you just break it down
into big operations that operate on the
whole file
• This is very much a "declarative" style
• The key : Think big...

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 42

 Iteration is the Glue
• The glue that holds the pipeline together is the
iteration that occurs in each step
wwwlog = open("access-log")

bytecolumn = (line.rsplit(None,1)[1] for line in wwwlog)

bytes = (int(x) for x in bytecolumn if x != '-')

print "Total", sum(bytes)

• The calculation is being driven by the last step

• The sum() function is consuming values being
pulled through the pipeline (via .next() calls)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 43

Performance

• Surely, this generator approach has all

sorts of fancy-dancy magic that is slow.
• Let's check it out on a 1.3Gb log file...
% ls -l big-access-log
-rw-r--r-- beazley 1303238000 Feb 29 08:06 big-access-log

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 44

 Performance Contest
wwwlog = open("big-access-log")
total = 0
for line in wwwlog: Time
bytestr = line.rsplit(None,1)[1]
if bytestr != '-':
total += int(bytestr) 27.20
print "Total", total

wwwlog = open("big-access-log")
bytecolumn = (line.rsplit(None,1)[1] for line in wwwlog)
bytes = (int(x) for x in bytecolumn if x != '-')

print "Total", sum(bytes) Time

25.96
Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 45

Commentary
• Not only was it not slow, it was 5% faster
• And it was less code
• And it was relatively easy to read
• And frankly, I like it a whole better...
"Back in the old days, we used AWK for this and
we liked it. Oh, yeah, and get off my lawn!"

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 46

 Performance Contest
wwwlog = open("access-log")
bytecolumn = (line.rsplit(None,1)[1] for line in wwwlog)
bytes = (int(x) for x in bytecolumn if x != '-')

print "Total", sum(bytes) Time

25.96

% awk '{ total += $NF } END { print total }' big-access-log

Note:extracting the last Time

column might not be
awk's strong point 37.33
(it's often quite fast)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 47

Food for Thought

• At no point in our generator solution did

we ever create large temporary lists
• Thus, not only is that solution faster, it can
be applied to enormous data files
• It's competitive with traditional tools

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 48

 More Thoughts
• The generator solution was based on the
concept of pipelining data between
different components
• What if you had more advanced kinds of
components to work with?
• Perhaps you could perform different kinds
of processing by just plugging various
pipeline components together

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 49

This Sounds Familiar

• The Unix philosophy

• Have a collection of useful system utils
• Can hook these up to files or each other
• Perform complex tasks by piping data

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 50

 Part 3
Fun with Files and Directories

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 51

Programming Problem
You have hundreds of web server logs scattered
across various directories. In additional, some of
the logs are compressed. Modify the last program
so that you can easily read all of these logs

foo/
access-log-012007.gz
access-log-022007.gz
access-log-032007.gz
...
access-log-012008
bar/
access-log-092007.bz2
...
access-log-022008

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 52

 os.walk()
• A very useful function for searching the
file system
import os

for path, dirlist, filelist in os.walk(topdir):

# path : Current directory
# dirlist : List of subdirectories
# filelist : List of files
...

• This utilizes generators to recursively walk

through the file system

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 53

find
• Generate all filenames in a directory tree
that match a given filename pattern
import os
import fnmatch

def gen_find(filepat,top):
for path, dirlist, filelist in os.walk(top):
for name in fnmatch.filter(filelist,filepat):
yield os.path.join(path,name)

• Examples
pyfiles = gen_find("*.py","/")
logs = gen_find("access-log*","/usr/www/")

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 54

 Performance Contest
pyfiles = gen_find("*.py","/")
for name in pyfiles:
Wall Clock Time
print name
559s

% find / -name '*.py'

Wall Clock Time
468s

Performed on a 750GB file system

containing about 140000 .py files

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 55

A File Opener
• Open a sequence of filenames
import gzip, bz2
def gen_open(filenames):
for name in filenames:
if name.endswith(".gz"):
yield gzip.open(name)
elif name.endswith(".bz2"):
yield bz2.BZ2File(name)
else:
yield open(name)

• This is interesting.... it takes a sequence of

filenames as input and yields a sequence of open
file objects (with decompression if needed)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 56

 cat
• Concatenate items from one or more
source into a single sequence of items
def gen_cat(sources):
for s in sources:
for item in s:
yield item

• Example:
lognames = gen_find("access-log*", "/usr/www")
logfiles = gen_open(lognames)
loglines = gen_cat(logfiles)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 57

grep
• Generate a sequence of lines that contain
a given regular expression
import re

def gen_grep(pat, lines):

patc = re.compile(pat)
for line in lines:
if patc.search(line): yield line

• Example:
lognames = gen_find("access-log*", "/usr/www")
logfiles = gen_open(lognames)
loglines = gen_cat(logfiles)
patlines = gen_grep(pat, loglines)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 58

 Example
• Find out how many bytes transferred for a
specific pattern in a whole directory of logs
pat = r"somepattern"
logdir = "/some/dir/"

filenames = gen_find("access-log*",logdir)
logfiles = gen_open(filenames)
loglines = gen_cat(logfiles)
patlines = gen_grep(pat,loglines)
bytecolumn = (line.rsplit(None,1)[1] for line in patlines)
bytes = (int(x) for x in bytecolumn if x != '-')

print "Total", sum(bytes)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 59

Important Concept
• Generators decouple iteration from the
code that uses the results of the iteration
• In the last example, we're performing a
calculation on a sequence of lines
• It doesn't matter where or how those
lines are generated
• Thus, we can plug any number of
components together up front as long as
they eventually produce a line sequence

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 60

 Part 4
Parsing and Processing Data

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 61

Programming Problem
Web server logs consist of different columns of
data. Parse each line into a useful data structure
that allows us to easily inspect the different fields.

81.107.39.38 - - [24/Feb/2008:00:08:59 -0600] "GET ..." 200 7587

host referrer user [datetime] "request" status bytes

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 62

 Parsing with Regex
• Let's route the lines through a regex parser
logpats = r'(\S+) (\S+) (\S+) \[(.*?)\] '\
r'"(\S+) (\S+) (\S+)" (\S+) (\S+)'

logpat = re.compile(logpats)

groups = (logpat.match(line) for line in loglines)

tuples = (g.groups() for g in groups if g)

• This generates a sequence of tuples

('71.201.176.194', '-', '-', '26/Feb/2008:10:30:08 -0600',
'GET', '/ply/ply.html', 'HTTP/1.1', '200', '97238')

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 63

Tuple Commentary
• I generally don't like data processing on tuples
('71.201.176.194', '-', '-', '26/Feb/2008:10:30:08 -0600',
'GET', '/ply/ply.html', 'HTTP/1.1', '200', '97238')

• First, they are immutable--so you can't modify

• Second, to extract specific fields, you have to
remember the column number--which is
annoying if there are a lot of columns
• Third, existing code breaks if you change the
number of fields
Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 64
 Tuples to Dictionaries
• Let's turn tuples into dictionaries
colnames = ('host','referrer','user','datetime',
'method','request','proto','status','bytes')

log = (dict(zip(colnames,t)) for t in tuples)

• This generates a sequence of named fields

{ 'status' : '200',
'proto' : 'HTTP/1.1',
'referrer': '-',
'request' : '/ply/ply.html',
'bytes' : '97238',
'datetime': '24/Feb/2008:00:08:59 -0600',
'host' : '140.180.132.213',
'user' : '-',
'method' : 'GET'}

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 65

Field Conversion
• You might want to map specific dictionary fields
through a conversion function (e.g., int(), float())
def field_map(dictseq,name,func):
for d in dictseq:
d[name] = func(d[name])
yield d

• Example: Convert a few field values

log = field_map(log,"status", int)
log = field_map(log,"bytes",
lambda s: int(s) if s !='-' else 0)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 66

 Field Conversion
• Creates dictionaries of converted values
{ 'status': 200,
'proto': 'HTTP/1.1', Note conversion
'referrer': '-',
'request': '/ply/ply.html',
'datetime': '24/Feb/2008:00:08:59 -0600',
'bytes': 97238,
'host': '140.180.132.213',
'user': '-',
'method': 'GET'}

• Again, this is just one big processing pipeline

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 67

The Code So Far

lognames = gen_find("access-log*","www")
logfiles = gen_open(lognames)
loglines = gen_cat(logfiles)
groups = (logpat.match(line) for line in loglines)
tuples = (g.groups() for g in groups if g)

colnames = ('host','referrer','user','datetime','method',
'request','proto','status','bytes')

log = (dict(zip(colnames,t)) for t in tuples)

log = field_map(log,"bytes",
lambda s: int(s) if s != '-' else 0)
log = field_map(log,"status",int)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 68

 Getting Organized
• As a processing pipeline grows, certain parts of it
may be useful components on their own

generate lines Parse a sequence of lines from

from a set of files Apache server logs into a
in a directory sequence of dictionaries

• A series of pipeline stages can be easily

encapsulated by a normal Python function

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 69

Packaging
• Example : multiple pipeline stages inside a function
def lines_from_dir(filepat, dirname):
names = gen_find(filepat,dirname)
files = gen_open(names)
lines = gen_cat(files)
return lines

• This is now a general purpose component that can

be used as a single element in other pipelines

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 70

 Packaging
• Example : Parse an Apache log into dicts
def apache_log(lines):
groups = (logpat.match(line) for line in lines)
tuples = (g.groups() for g in groups if g)

colnames = ('host','referrer','user','datetime','method',
'request','proto','status','bytes')

log = (dict(zip(colnames,t)) for t in tuples)

log = field_map(log,"bytes",
lambda s: int(s) if s != '-' else 0)
log = field_map(log,"status",int)

return log

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 71

Example Use
• It's easy
lines = lines_from_dir("access-log*","www")
log = apache_log(lines)

for r in log:
print r

• Different components have been subdivided

according to the data that they process

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 72

 Food for Thought

• When creating pipeline components, it's

critical to focus on the inputs and outputs
• You will get the most flexibility when you
use a standard set of datatypes
• For example, using standard Python
dictionaries as opposed to custom objects

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 73

A Query Language
• Now that we have our log, let's do some queries
• Find the set of all documents that 404
stat404 = set(r['request'] for r in log
if r['status'] == 404)

• Print all requests that transfer over a megabyte

large = (r for r in log
if r['bytes'] > 1000000)

for r in large:
print r['request'], r['bytes']

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 74

 A Query Language
• Find the largest data transfer
print "%d %s" % max((r['bytes'],r['request'])
for r in log)

• Collect all unique host IP addresses

hosts = set(r['host'] for r in log)

• Find the number of downloads of a file

sum(1 for r in log
if r['request'] == '/ply/ply-2.3.tar.gz')

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 75

A Query Language
• Find out who has been hitting robots.txt
addrs = set(r['host'] for r in log
if 'robots.txt' in r['request'])

import socket
for addr in addrs:
try:
print socket.gethostbyaddr(addr)[0]
except socket.herror:
print addr

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 76

 Performance Study
• Sadly, the last example doesn't run so fast on a
huge input file (53 minutes on the 1.3GB log)
• But, the beauty of generators is that you can plug
filters in at almost any stage
lines = lines_from_dir("big-access-log",".")
lines = (line for line in lines if 'robots.txt' in line)
log = apache_log(lines)
addrs = set(r['host'] for r in log)
...

• That version takes 93 seconds

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 77

Some Thoughts
• I like the idea of using generator expressions as a
pipeline query language
• You can write simple filters, extract data, etc.
• You you pass dictionaries/objects through the
pipeline, it becomes quite powerful
• Feels similar to writing SQL queries

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 78

 Part 5
Processing Infinite Data

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 79

Question
• Have you ever used 'tail -f' in Unix?
% tail -f logfile
...
... lines of output ...
...

• This prints the lines written to the end of a file

• The "standard" way to watch a log file
• I used this all of the time when working on
scientific simulations ten years ago...

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 80

 Infinite Sequences

• Tailing a log file results in an "infinite" stream

• It constantly watches the file and yields lines as
soon as new data is written
• But you don't know how much data will actually
be written (in advance)
• And log files can often be enormous

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 81

Tailing a File
• A Python version of 'tail -f'
import time
def follow(thefile):
thefile.seek(0,2) # Go to the end of the file
while True:
line = thefile.readline()
if not line:
time.sleep(0.1) # Sleep briefly
continue
yield line

• Idea : Seek to the end of the file and repeatedly

try to read new lines. If new data is written to
the file, we'll pick it up.
Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 82
 Example
• Using our follow function
logfile = open("access-log")
loglines = follow(logfile)

for line in loglines:

print line,

• This produces the same output as 'tail -f'

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 83

Example
• Turn the real-time log file into records
logfile = open("access-log")
loglines = follow(logfile)
log = apache_log(loglines)

• Print out all 404 requests as they happen

r404 = (r for r in log if r['status'] == 404)
for r in r404:
print r['host'],r['datetime'],r['request']

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 84

 Commentary
• We just plugged this new input scheme onto
the front of our processing pipeline
• Everything else still works, with one caveat-
functions that consume an entire iterable won't
terminate (min, max, sum, set, etc.)
• Nevertheless, we can easily write processing
steps that operate on an infinite data stream

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 85

Part 6
Decoding Binary Records

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 86

 Incremental Parsing

• Generators are a useful way to incrementally

parse almost any kind of data
• One example : Small binary encoded records
• Python has a struct module that's used for this
• Let's look at a quick example

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 87

Struct Example
• Suppose you had a file of binary records
encoded as follows
Byte offsets Description Encoding
-------------- --------------- ----------------------
0-8 Stock name (8 byte string)
9-11 Price (32-bit float)
12-15 Change (32-bit float)
16-19 Volume (32-bit unsigned int)

• Each record is 20 bytes

• Here's the underlying file
...
20 bytes 20 bytes 20 bytes 20 bytes

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 88

 Incremental Parsing
• Here's a generator that rips through a file of
binary encoded records and decodes them
# genrecord.py
import struct

def gen_records(record_format, thefile):

record_size = struct.calcsize(record_format)
while True:
raw_record = thefile.read(record_size)
if not raw_record:
break
yield struct.unpack(record_format, raw_record)

• This reads record-by-record and decodes each

one using the struct library module
Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 89

Incremental Parsing
• Example:
from genrecord import *

f = open("stockdata.bin","rb")
records = gen_records("8sffi",f)
for name, price, change, volume in records:
# Process data
...

• Notice : Logic concerning the file parsing and

record decoding is hidden from view

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 90

 A Problem

• Reading files in small chunks (e.g., 20 bytes) is

grossly inefficient
• It would be better to read in larger chunks with
some underlying buffering

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 91

Buffered Reading
• A generator that reads large chunks of data
def chunk_reader(thefile, chunksize):
while True:
chunk = thefile.read(chunksize)
if not chunk: break
yield chunk

• A generator that splits chunks into records

def split_chunks(chunk,recordsize):
for n in xrange(0,len(chunk),recordsize):
yield chunk[n:n+recordsize]

• Notice how these are general purpose

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 92
 Buffered Reading
• A new version of the record generator
# genrecord2.py
import struct

def gen_records(record_format, thefile):

record_size = struct.calcsize(record_format)
chunks = chunk_reader(thefile,1000*record_size)
records = split_chunks(chunks,record_size)
for r in records:
yield struct.unpack(record_format, r)

• This version is reading data 1000 records at a

time, but still producing a stream of individual
records

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 93

Part 7
Flipping Everything Around
(from generators to coroutines)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 94

 Coroutines and Generators
• Generator functions have been supported by
Python for some time (Python 2.3)
• In Python 2.5, generators picked up some
new features to allow "coroutines" (PEP-342).
• Most notably: a new send() method
• However, this feature is not nearly as well
understood as what we have covered so far

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 95

Yield as an Expression
• In Python 2.5, can use yield as an expression
• For example, on the right side of an assignment
def grep(pattern):
print "Looking for %s" % pattern
while True:
line = (yield)
if pattern in line:
print line,

• Question : What is its value?

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 96

 Coroutines
• If you use yield more generally, you get a coroutine
• These do more than generate values
• Instead, functions can consume values sent to it.
>>> g = grep("python")
>>> g.next() # Prime it (explained shortly)
Looking for python
>>> g.send("Yeah, but no, but yeah, but no")
>>> g.send("A series of tubes")
>>> g.send("python generators rock!")
python generators rock!
>>>

• Sent values are returned by (yield)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 97

Coroutine Execution
• Execution is the same as for a generator
• When you call a coroutine, nothing happens
• They only run in response to next() and send()
methods Notice that no
output was
produced
>>> g = grep("python")
>>> g.next()
Looking for python On first operation,
>>> coroutine starts
running

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 98

 Coroutine Priming
• All coroutines must be "primed" by first
calling .next() (or send(None))
• This advances execution to the location of the
first yield expression.
def grep(pattern):
print "Looking for %s" % pattern
while True: .next() advances the
line = (yield) coroutine to the
if pattern in line: first yield expression
print line,

• At this point, it's ready to receive a value

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 99

Using a Decorator
• Remembering to call .next() is easy to forget
• Solved by wrapping coroutines with a decorator
def coroutine(func):
def start(*args,**kwargs):
cr = func(*args,**kwargs)
cr.next()
return cr
return start

@coroutine
def grep(pattern):
...

• I will use this in most of the future examples

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 100
 Closing a Coroutine
• A coroutine might run indefinitely
• Use .close() to shut it down
>>> g = grep("python")
>>> g.next() # Prime it
Looking for python
>>> g.send("Yeah, but no, but yeah, but no")
>>> g.send("A series of tubes")
>>> g.send("python generators rock!")
python generators rock!
>>> g.close()

• Note: Garbage collection also calls close()

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 101

Catching close()
• close() can be caught (GeneratorExit)
@coroutine
def grep(pattern):
print "Looking for %s" % pattern
try:
while True:
line = (yield)
if pattern in line:
print line,
except GeneratorExit:
print "Going away. Goodbye"

• You cannot ignore this exception

• Only legal action is to clean up and return
Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 102
 Part 8
Coroutines, Pipelines, and Dataflow

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 103

Processing Pipelines

• Coroutines can also be used to set up pipes

send() send() send()
coroutine coroutine coroutine

• You just chain coroutines together and push

data through the pipe with send() operations

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 104

 Pipeline Sources
• The pipeline needs an initial source (a producer)
send() send()
source coroutine

• The source drives the entire pipeline

def source(target):
while not done:
item = produce_an_item()
...
target.send(item)
...
target.close()

• It is typically not a coroutine

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 105

Pipeline Sinks
• The pipeline must have an end-point (sink)
send() send()
coroutine sink

• Collects all data sent to it and processes it

@coroutine
def sink():
try:
while True:
item = (yield) # Receive an item
...
except GeneratorExit: # Handle .close()
# Done
...

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 106

 An Example
• A source that mimics Unix 'tail -f'
import time
def follow(thefile, target):
thefile.seek(0,2) # Go to the end of the file
while True:
line = thefile.readline()
if not line:
time.sleep(0.1) # Sleep briefly
continue
target.send(line)

• A sink that just prints the lines

@coroutine
def printer():
while True:
line = (yield)
print line,

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 107

An Example
• Hooking it together
f = open("access-log")
follow(f, printer())

• A picture
send()
follow() printer()

• Critical point : follow() is driving the entire

computation by reading lines and pushing them
into the printer() coroutine

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 108

 Pipeline Filters
• Intermediate stages both receive and send
send() send()
coroutine

• Typically perform some kind of data

transformation, filtering, routing, etc.
@coroutine
def filter(target):
while True:
item = (yield) # Receive an item
# Transform/filter item
...
# Send it along to the next stage
target.send(item)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 109

A Filter Example
• A grep filter coroutine
@coroutine
def grep(pattern,target):
while True:
line = (yield) # Receive a line
if pattern in line:
target.send(line) # Send to next stage

• Hooking it up
f = open("access-log")
follow(f,
grep('python',
printer()))

• A picture
send() send()
follow() grep() printer()

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 110

 Interlude
• Coroutines flip generators around
generators/iteration
input
generator generator generator for x in s:
sequence

coroutines
send() send()
source coroutine coroutine

• Key difference. Generators pull data through

the pipe with iteration. Coroutines push data
into the pipeline with send().
Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 111

Being Branchy
• With coroutines, you can send data to multiple
destinations
send()
coroutine coroutine
send()
send() send()
source coroutine coroutine

send() coroutine

• The source simply "sends" data. Further routing

of that data can be arbitrarily complex

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 112

 Example : Broadcasting
• Broadcast to multiple targets
@coroutine
def broadcast(targets):
while True:
item = (yield)
for target in targets:
target.send(item)

• This takes a sequence of coroutines (targets)

and sends received items to all of them.

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 113

Example : Broadcasting
• Example use:
f = open("access-log")
follow(f,
broadcast([grep('python',printer()),
grep('ply',printer()),
grep('swig',printer())])
)

grep('python') printer()

follow broadcast grep('ply') printer()

grep('swig') printer()

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 114

 Example : Broadcasting
• A more disturbing variation...
f = open("access-log")
p = printer()
follow(f,
broadcast([grep('python',p),
grep('ply',p),
grep('swig',p)])
)

grep('python')

follow broadcast grep('ply') printer()

grep('swig')

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 115

Interlude
• Coroutines provide more powerful data routing
possibilities than simple iterators
• If you built a collection of simple data processing
components, you can glue them together into
complex arrangements of pipes, branches,
merging, etc.
• Although you might not want to make it
excessively complicated (although that might
increase/decrease one's job security)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 116

 Part 9
Coroutines and Event Dispatching

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 117

Event Handling

• Coroutines can be used to write various

components that process event streams
• Pushing event streams into coroutines
• Let's look at an example...

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 118

 Problem
• Where is my ^&#&@* bus?
• Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) equips most
of its buses with real-time GPS tracking
• You can get current data on every bus on the
street as a big XML document
• Use "The Google" to search for details...

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 119

Some XML
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<buses>
<bus>
! ! <id>7574</id>
!! <route>147</route>
!! <color>#3300ff</color>
!! <revenue>true</revenue>
!! <direction>North Bound</direction>
!! <latitude>41.925682067871094</latitude>
!<longitude>-87.63092803955078</longitude>
!<pattern>2499</pattern>
!<patternDirection>North Bound</patternDirection>
! <run>P675</run>
<finalStop><![CDATA[Paulina & Howard Terminal]]></finalStop>
<operator>42493</operator>
</bus>
<bus>
...
</bus>
</buses>
Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 120
 XML Parsing
• There are many possible ways to parse XML
• An old-school approach: SAX
• SAX is an event driven interface
Handler Object
class Handler:
def startElement():
events ...
XML Parser def endElement():
...
def characters():
...

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 121

Minimal SAX Example

import xml.sax

class MyHandler(xml.sax.ContentHandler):
def startElement(self,name,attrs):
print "startElement", name
def endElement(self,name):
print "endElement", name
def characters(self,text):
print "characters", repr(text)[:40]

xml.sax.parse("somefile.xml",MyHandler())

• You see this same programming pattern in

other settings (e.g., HTMLParser module)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 122

 Some Issues

• SAX is often used because it can be used to

incrementally process huge XML files without
a large memory footprint
• However, the event-driven nature of SAX
parsing makes it rather awkward and low-level
to deal with

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 123

From SAX to Coroutines

• You can dispatch SAX events into coroutines
• Consider this SAX handler
import xml.sax

class EventHandler(xml.sax.ContentHandler):
def __init__(self,target):
self.target = target
def startElement(self,name,attrs):
self.target.send(('start',(name,attrs._attrs)))
def characters(self,text):
self.target.send(('text',text))
def endElement(self,name):
self.target.send(('end',name))

• It does nothing, but send events to a target

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 124
 An Event Stream
• The big picture
events send()
SAX Parser Handler (event,value)

'start' ('direction',{})
'end' 'direction'
'text' 'North Bound'
Event type Event values

• Observe : Coding this was straightforward

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 125

Event Processing
• To do anything interesting, you have to
process the event stream
• Example: Convert bus elements into
dictionaries (XML sucks, dictionaries rock)

<bus> {
! ! <id>7574</id> 'id' : '7574',
!! <route>147</route> 'route' : '147',
!! <revenue>true</revenue> 'revenue' : 'true',
!! <direction>North Bound</direction> 'direction' : 'North Bound'
!! ... ...
</bus> }

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 126

 Buses to Dictionaries
@coroutine
def buses_to_dicts(target):
while True:
event, value = (yield)
# Look for the start of a <bus> element
if event == 'start' and value[0] == 'bus':
busdict = { }
fragments = []
# Capture text of inner elements in a dict
while True:
event, value = (yield)
if event == 'start': fragments = []
elif event == 'text': fragments.append(value)
elif event == 'end':
if value != 'bus':
busdict[value] = "".join(fragments)
else:
target.send(busdict)
break

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 127

State Machines
• The previous code works by implementing a
simple state machine

('start',('bus',*))
A B
('end','bus')

• State A: Looking for a bus

• State B: Collecting bus attributes
• Comment : Coroutines are perfect for this
Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 128
 Buses to Dictionaries
@coroutine
def buses_to_dicts(target):
while True:
event, value = (yield)
A # Look for the start of a <bus> element
if event == 'start' and value[0] == 'bus':
busdict = { }
fragments = []
# Capture text of inner elements in a dict
while True:
event, value = (yield)
if event == 'start': fragments = []
elif event == 'text': fragments.append(value)
elif event == 'end':
B
if value != 'bus':
busdict[value] = "".join(fragments)
else:
target.send(busdict)
break

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 129

Filtering Elements
• Let's filter on dictionary fields
@coroutine
def filter_on_field(fieldname,value,target):
while True:
d = (yield)
if d.get(fieldname) == value:
target.send(d)

• Examples:filter_on_field("route","22",target)
filter_on_field("direction","North Bound",target)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 130

 Processing Elements
• Where's my bus?
@coroutine
def bus_locations():
while True:
bus = (yield)
print "%(route)s,%(id)s,\"%(direction)s\","\
"%(latitude)s,%(longitude)s" % bus

• This receives dictionaries and prints a table

22,1485,"North Bound",41.880481123924255,-87.62948191165924
22,1629,"North Bound",42.01851969751819,-87.6730209876751
...

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 131

Hooking it Together
• Find all locations of the North Bound #22 bus
(the slowest moving object in the universe)
xml.sax.parse("allroutes.xml",
EventHandler(
buses_to_dicts(
filter_on_field("route","22",
filter_on_field("direction","North Bound",
bus_locations())))
))

• This final step involves a bit of plumbing, but

each of the parts is relatively simple

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 132

 How Low Can You Go?

• I've picked this XML example for reason

• One interesting thing about coroutines is that
you can push the initial data source as low-
level as you want to make it without rewriting
all of the processing stages
• Let's say SAX just isn't quite fast enough...

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 133

XML Parsing with Expat

• Let's strip it down....
import xml.parsers.expat

def expat_parse(f,target):
parser = xml.parsers.expat.ParserCreate()
parser.buffer_size = 65536
parser.buffer_text = True
parser.returns_unicode = False
parser.StartElementHandler = \
lambda name,attrs: target.send(('start',(name,attrs)))
parser.EndElementHandler = \
lambda name: target.send(('end',name))
parser.CharacterDataHandler = \
lambda data: target.send(('text',data))
parser.ParseFile(f)

• expat is low-level (a C extension module)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 134
 Performance Contest
• SAX version (on a 30MB XML input)
xml.sax.parse("allroutes.xml",EventHandler(
buses_to_dicts(
filter_on_field("route","22", 8.37s
filter_on_field("direction","North Bound",
bus_locations())))))

• Expat version
expat_parse(open("allroutes.xml"),
buses_to_dicts(
filter_on_field("route","22", 4.51s
filter_on_field("direction","North Bound", (83% speedup)
bus_locations()))))

• No changes to the processing stages

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 135

Going Lower
• You can even drop send() operations into C
• A skeleton of how this works...
PyObject *
py_parse(PyObject *self, PyObject *args) {
PyObject *filename;
PyObject *target;
PyObject *send_method;
if (!PyArg_ParseArgs(args,"sO",&filename,&target)) {
return NULL;
}
send_method = PyObject_GetAttrString(target,"send");
...

/* Invoke target.send(item) */
args = Py_BuildValue("(O)",item);
result = PyEval_CallObject(send_meth,args);
...

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 136

 Performance Contest
• Expat version
expat_parse(open("allroutes.xml"),
buses_to_dicts(
filter_on_field("route","22", 4.51s
filter_on_field("direction","North Bound",
bus_locations())))))

• A custom C extension written directly on top

of the expat C library (code not shown)
cxmlparse.parse("allroutes.xml",
buses_to_dicts(
filter_on_field("route","22", 2.95s
filter_on_field("direction","North Bound",
bus_locations()))))) (55% speedup)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 137

Interlude
• Processing events is a situation that is well-
suited for coroutine functions
• With event driven systems, some kind of event
handling loop is usually in charge
• Because of that, it's really hard to twist it
around into a programming model based on
iteration
• However, if you just push events into
coroutines with send(), it works fine.

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 138

 Part 10
From Data Processing to Concurrent Programming

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 139

The Story So Far

• Generators and coroutines can be used to

define small processing components that can
be connected together in various ways
• You can process data by setting up pipelines,
dataflow graphs, etc.
• It's all been done in simple Python programs

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 140

 An Interesting Twist

• Pushing data around nicely ties into problems

related to threads, processes, networking,
distributed systems, etc.
• Could two generators communicate over a
pipe or socket?
• Answer :Yes, of course

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 141

Basic Concurrency
• You can package generators inside threads or
subprocesses by adding extra layers
Thread Host

generator socket generator

queue
Thread
queue
source generator generator

pipe
Subprocess

generator

• Will sketch out some basic ideas...

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 142
 Pipelining over a Pipe

• Suppose you wanted to bridge a generator/

coroutine data flow across a pipe or socket
• Doing that is actually pretty easy
• Just use the pickle module to serialize objects
and add some functions to deal with the
communication

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 143

Pickler/Unpickler
• Turn a generated sequence into pickled objects
def gen_sendto(source,outfile):
for item in source:
pickle.dump(item,outfile)

def gen_recvfrom(infile):
while True:
try:
item = pickle.load(infile)
yield item
except EOFError:
return

• Now, attach these to a pipe or socket

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 144
 Sender/Receiver
• Example: Sender
# netprod.py
import subprocess
p = subprocess.Popen(['python','netcons.py'],
stdin=subprocess.PIPE)

lines = follow(open("access-log"))
log = apache_log(lines)
gen_sendto(log,p.stdin)

• Example: Receiver
# netcons.py
import sys
for r in get_recvfrom(sys.stdin):
print r

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 145

A Subprocess Target
• Bridging coroutines over a pipe/socket
@coroutine
def co_sendto(f):
try:
while True:
item = (yield)
pickle.dump(item,f)
f.flush()
except StopIteration:
f.close()

def co_recvfrom(f,target):
try:
while True:
item = pickle.load(f)
target.send(item)
except EOFError:
target.close()

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 146

 A Subprocess Target
• High Level Picture
pipe/socket
co_sendto() co_recvfrom()
pickle.dump() pickle.load()

• Of course, the devil is in the details...

• You would not do this unless you can recover
the cost of the underlying communication
(e.g., you have multiple CPUs and there's
enough processing to make it worthwhile)
Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 147

A Process Example
• A parent process
# Launch a child process
import subprocess
p = subprocess.Popen(['python','child.py'],
stdin=subprocess.PIPE)

# Feed data into the child

xml.sax.parse("allroutes.xml", EventHandler(
buses_to_dicts(
co_sendto(p.stdin))))

• A child process
# child.py
import sys
...
co_recvfrom(sys.stdin,
filter_on_field("route","22",
filter_on_field("direction","North Bound",
bus_locations())))
Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 148
 A Picture
• Here is an overview of the last example
Main Program
xml.sax.parse

EventHandler
subprocess

buses_to_dicts filter_on_field

filter_on_field

bus_locations

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 149

Wrap Up

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 150

 The Big Idea
• Generators are an incredibly useful tool for a
variety of "systems" related problem
• Power comes from the ability to set up
processing pipelines and route data around
• Can create components that plugged into the
pipeline as reusable pieces
• Can extend processing pipelines in many
directions (networking, threads, etc.)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 151

Code Reuse
• There is an interesting reuse element
• You create a lot of small processing parts
and glue them together to build larger apps
• Personally, I like it a lot better than what I
see people doing with various OO patterns
involving callbacks (e.g., the strategy design
pattern and variants)

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 152

 Pitfalls
• Programming with generators involves
techniques that a lot of programmers have
never seen before in other languages
• Springing this on the uninitiated might cause
their head to explode
• Error handling is really tricky because you have
lots of components chained together and the
control-flow is unconventional
• Need to pay careful attention to debugging,
reliability, and other issues.
Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 153

Shameless Plug
• Further details on useful applications of
generators and coroutines will be featured in
the "Python Essential Reference, 4th Edition"
• Look for it (Summer 2009)
• I also teach Python classes

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 154

 Thanks!

• I hope you got some new ideas from this class

• Please feel free to contact me
http://www.dabeaz.com

Copyright (C) 2009, David Beazley, http://www.dabeaz.com 155