ERR: Add check for iterators when creating DataFrame

Add test case for iterator data argument

Move the type check up to where other checks are performed

Use asserRaisesRegexp for more specific checking

Add fix to the release notes

Author: onesandzeroes

doc/source/release.rst

@@ -178,6 +178,8 @@ API Changes
 - change ``AssertionError`` to ``TypeError`` for invalid types passed to ``concat`` (:issue:`6583`)
 - Add :class:`~pandas.io.parsers.ParserWarning` class for fallback and option
   validation warnings in :func:`read_csv`/:func:`read_table` (:issue:`6607`)
+- Raise a ``TypeError`` when ``DataFrame`` is passed an iterator as the
+  ``data`` argument (:issue:`5357`)
 
 Deprecations
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~

pandas/core/frame.py

@@ -253,6 +253,8 @@ def __init__(self, data=None, index=None, columns=None, dtype=None,
             else:
                 mgr = self._init_ndarray(data, index, columns, dtype=dtype,
                                          copy=copy)
+        elif isinstance(data, collections.Iterator):
+            raise TypeError("data argument can't be an iterator")
         else:
             try:
                 arr = np.array(data, dtype=dtype, copy=copy)

pandas/tests/test_frame.py

@@ -3135,6 +3135,10 @@ def test_constructor_miscast_na_int_dtype(self):
         expected = DataFrame([[np.nan, 1], [1, 0]])
         assert_frame_equal(df, expected)
 
+    def test_constructor_iterator_failure(self):
+        with assertRaisesRegexp(TypeError, 'iterator'):
+            df = DataFrame(iter([1, 2, 3]))
+
     def test_constructor_column_duplicates(self):
         # it works! #2079
         df = DataFrame([[8, 5]], columns=['a', 'a'])