What is the Python equivalent of static variables inside a function?

Question

What is the idiomatic Python equivalent of this C/C++ code?

void foo()
{
    static int counter = 0;
    counter++;
          


        

Answer 1

Use a generator function to generate an iterator.

def foo_gen():
    n = 0
    while True:
        n+=1
        yield n

Then use it like

foo = foo_gen().next
for i in range(0,10):
    print foo()

If you want an upper limit:

def foo_gen(limit=100000):
    n = 0
    while n < limit:
       n+=1
       yield n

If the iterator terminates (like the example above), you can also loop over it directly, like

for i in foo_gen(20):
    print i

Of course, in these simple cases it's better to use xrange :)

Here is the documentation on the yield statement.