Sending objects to a generator

In addition to receiving values from a generator, it is possible to send an object to a generator using the send() method.

def accumulator():
    total = 0
    value = None
    while True:
        # receive sent value
        value = yield total
        if value is None: break
        # aggregate values
        total += value

generator = accumulator()

# advance until the first "yield"
next(generator)      # 0

# from this point on, the generator aggregates values
generator.send(1)    # 1
generator.send(10)   # 11
generator.send(100)  # 111
# ...

# Calling next(generator) is equivalent to calling generator.send(None)
next(generator)      # StopIteration

What happens here is the following:

• When you first call next(generator), the program advances to the first yield statement, and returns the value of total at that point, which is 0. The execution of the generator suspends at this point.
• When you then call generator.send(x), the interpreter takes the argument x and makes it the return value of the last yield statement, which gets assigned to value. The generator then proceeds as usual, until it yields the next value.
• When you finally call next(generator), the program treats this as if you’re sending None to the generator. There is nothing special about None, however, this example uses None as a special value to ask the generator to stop.