''' A class which presents the reverse of a sequence without duplicating it. From: "Steven D. Majewski" It works on mutable or inmutable sequences. >>> Rev('Hello World!') !dlroW olleH The .forw is so you can use anonymous sequences in __init__, and still keep a reference the forward sequence. ) If you give it a non-anonymous mutable sequence, the reverse sequence will track the updated values. ( but not reassignment! - another good reason to use anonymous values in creating the sequence to avoid confusion. Maybe it should be change to copy input sequence to break the connection completely ? ) >>> nnn = list(range(3)) >>> rnn = Rev(nnn) >>> for n in rnn: n ... 2 1 0 >>> for n in range(4, 6): nnn.append(n) # update nnn ... >>> for n in rnn: n # prints reversed updated values ... 5 4 2 1 0 >>> nnn = nnn[1:-1] >>> nnn [1, 2, 4] >>> for n in rnn: n # prints reversed values of old nnn ... 5 4 2 1 0 # >>> WH = Rev('Hello World!') >>> print(WH.forw, WH.back) Hello World! !dlroW olleH >>> nnn = Rev(list(range(1, 10))) >>> print(nnn.forw) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] >>> print(nnn.back) [9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1] >>> Rev(nnn) <1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9> ''' class Rev: def __init__(self, seq): self.forw = seq self.back = self def __len__(self): return len(self.forw) def __getitem__(self, j): return self.forw[-(j + 1)] def __repr__(self): seq = self.forw if isinstance(seq, list): wrap = '[]' sep = ', ' elif isinstance(seq, tuple): wrap = '()' sep = ', ' elif isinstance(seq, str): wrap = '' sep = '' else: wrap = '<>' sep = ', ' outstrs = [str(item) for item in self.back] return wrap[:1] + sep.join(outstrs) + wrap[-1:] def _test(): import doctest, Rev return doctest.testmod(Rev) if __name__ == "__main__": _test()