Let's say you work with a wrapper object:
class IterOrNotIter:
def __init__(self):
self.f = open('/tmp/toto.txt')
def __getattr__(self, item):
try:
return self.__getattribute__(item)
except AttributeError:
return self.f.__getattribute__(item)
This object implements __iter__, because it passes any call to it to its member f, which implements it. Case in point:
>>> x = IterOrNotIter()
>>> x.__iter__().__next__()
'Whatever was in /tmp/toto.txt\n'
According to the documentation (https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#iterator-types), IterOrNotIter should thus be iterable.
However, the Python interpreter does not recognize an IterOrNotIter object as actually being iterable:
>>> x = IterOrNotIter()
>>> for l in x:
... print(l)
...
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'IterOrNotIter' object is not iterable
Whereas this works:
>>> x = IterOrNotIter()
>>> for l in x.f:
... print(l)
...
Whatever was in /tmp/toto.txt
I don't understand why.