Python 3.x: Test if generator has elements remaining

Question

When I use a generator in a for loop, it seems to \"know\", when there are no more elements yielded. Now, I have to use a generator WITHOUT a for loop, and use next

Answer 1

The two statements you wrote deal with finding the end of the generator in exactly the same way. The for-loop simply calls .next() until the StopIteration exception is raised and then it terminates.

http://docs.python.org/tutorial/classes.html#iterators

As such I don't think waiting for the StopIteration exception is a 'heavy' way to deal with the problem, it's the way that generators are designed to be used.