while (a=b()) ...

[Jeremy Hylton]

>>>>> "TP" == Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:

  TP> You need to be much clearer about your claim here; certainly
  TP> xrange(1000000) runs much faster than range(1000000) on anyone's
  TP> machine (the former is constant time regardless of argument and
  TP> the latter at best takes time proportional to a million), so
  TP> your real complaint is about something else.

Actually, range(1000000) is faster on my machine.  Something like 3%
faster, but still faster.  Of course, if the program can amortize the
cost of creation/deletion across multiple iterations, it will be
substantially faster.

jeremy