Calling tuple on pytz.all_timezones produces an empty tuple

[[e-mail]]

The following program crashes on pytz-2014.10:

import pytz

if __name__ == '__main__':
    assert tuple(pytz.all_timezones)

The following succeeds:

import pytz

if __name__ == '__main__':
    list(pytz.all_timezones)
    assert tuple(pytz.all_timezones)

I'm not sure what's going on here exactly. Something about the tuple invocation is bypassing your LazyList mechanism, but I can't figure out exactly what. The initial list invocation (bool also works) seems to force it to load and subsequent calls to work.

[[e-mail] (6-david-h)]

Additional detail: Against all my expectations, this works correctly on pypy-2.5.0 and does not error.

[[e-mail] (6-david-h)]

The following demonstrates the source of the problem:

from __future__ import print_function

class TestList(list):

    def __iter__(self):
        yield 1
        yield 2
        yield 3

if __name__ == '__main__':
    x = TestList()

    x.extend([4, 5, 6])
    print(repr(tuple(x)))
    print(repr(list(x)))

Basically it looks like in CPython there's a special case for calling tuple on a list which bypasses all the normal methods.

[[e-mail] (6-david-h)]

I've now also filed a bug with CPython about this: http://bugs.python.org/issue23757

[[e-mail] (6-david-h)]

Based on the response on the linked issue and the additional link provided to http://bugs.python.org/issue10977, I think the only thing I can recommend here is that subclassing builtin types like list is a really bad idea and you probably shouldn't do it. Sorry.

[Stuart Bishop (stub)]

Work around the Python issue, or flag this as WONTFIX if that isn't possible. We can't backout lazy loading of these data structures.

[[e-mail] (6-david-h)]

Can you stop making your LazyList type a subclass of list and just have it implement the general protocol? Because that would be sufficient to work around the Python issue.

[Stuart Bishop (stub)]

Yes, that would be a suitable work around. It just needs to look like a list and do lazy loading, so people not using the structure don't have to pay the startup cost.

[[e-mail] (6-david-h)]

FWIW, this manifests a similar but slightly different problem in Jython: list(pytz.all_timezones) evaluates to an empty list.