Making a python iterator go backwards?

No, in general you cannot make a Python iterator go backwards. However, if you only want to step back once, you can try something like this:

def str(self, item):
    print item

    prev, current = None, self.__iter.next()
    while isinstance(current, int):
        print current
        prev, current = current, self.__iter.next()

You can then access the previous element any time in prev.

If you really need a bidirectional iterator, you can implement one yourself, but it’s likely to introduce even more overhead than the solution above:

class bidirectional_iterator(object):
    def __init__(self, collection):
        self.collection = collection
        self.index = 0

    def next(self):
        try:
            result = self.collection[self.index]
            self.index += 1
        except IndexError:
            raise StopIteration
        return result

    def prev(self):
        self.index -= 1
        if self.index < 0:
            raise StopIteration
        return self.collection[self.index]

    def __iter__(self):
        return self