PEP 260: simplify xrange()

[Tim Peters]

[Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes]
>   Looks reasonable - are there any uses of the advanced behaviors in
> the standard libraries?

Heh.  I expect Guido would say "braindead" instead of "advanced" <wink>.

I was amazed to find that-- outside of the test suite --there are fewer than
two dozen uses of xrange() in the entire distribution.  I was even more
amazed to find that almost all of them were added by me!  All but one are of
the "for yadda in xrange():" variety.  The exception is types.py's necessary
but unique

    XRangeType = type(xrange(0))

Apart from that, I know of several instances of spead-freak code not in the
distribution (and not mine either) that does

infinity = xrange(sys.maxint) # or even via the default-arg trick

for whatever in whatchamacallit:
    for i in infinity:
        yadda yadda yadda
        if youbetcha:
            break

I figure that will still work.

> ...
>   You know, this is one of the things that amazes me about Python -
> you actually *remove* features that aren't useful.

He *wants* to -- not always possible, though.  For example, Guido has little
use for anything but floating-point numbers, but all the crybaby users keep
whining for more string features <wink>.

i-may-be-able-to-channel-him-but-for-some-reason-he-never-lets-me-
    speak-for-him-ly y'rs  - tim