On the Ibuildings blog Ruud Alberts takes a look at iterators - what they are and how they're used (including the objects the SPL makes available).

Let's kickstart this blogpost by defining what an iterator actually is. According to wikipedia, an iterator is. A collection can pretty much be anything. The most obvious sources would be arrays, but other than that, iterations can be done over database resultsets, strings, datetime intervals, directories, file content and XML listings, to name a few.

He looks at the iterator interface that comes bundled in the SPL and how you can create a custom one to loop through your own data collection. He includes an example - a colorful string iterator that "pretties up" an HTML string with various colors.