On Thu, 06 Apr 2006 09:08:45 +1000, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > Yes, the above example is a good use case for xrange. Did you think that > anyone denied that there were good cases for it?
I am now officially sorry for starting this thread. Please let me just summarize what I wanted to say: * Question: Does Python do anything special with "for i in range"? (And I got an answer: the answer is "no".) * If Python does not do anything special with "for i in range", then you are building a list and tearing it down again without using the list, and for memory efficiency you might want to use xrange. (I used a more pithy phrase, which I now regret.) * It would be nice if the Python compiler checked for the special case of "for i in range" and compiled it to "for i in itr" where itr is a lightweight iterator that generates the same values as the range statement. Potentially, I speculated, this special iterator might be more lightweight than an xrange() object. That is all. I did not mean to tell anyone how to write a for loop. I did not mean to suggest that range() should be changed to always return an iterator. I did not mean to insult anyone. I don't even know what I ever wrote that sounded like "range should never be used". And I hope everyone recognized that the bit about "those responsible... have been sacked" was a reference to the opening credits of the movie _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_. I was trying to be funny, not sarcastic, bitter, etc. Thank you for your patience and I am done with this thread, unless I have written something unclear in *this* post and I have to post another post to clarify it as well. :-( -- Steve R. Hastings "Vita est" [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.blarg.net/~steveha -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
