PEP 276 Simple Iterator for ints

[Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters]

David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> wrote:
|The latter notation now seems unnecessarily redundant.  Think of it by
|analogy -- which of the following would you most likely use,
|    if 0 <= i < 5:
|or
|    if i in [0, 1, .. 4]:
|or
|    if i in range(5):
|or even (with Perl-like conciseness)
|    if i in 5:

I think this is wrong--the "redundant" part, that is.  These forms, at
first brush, have very different meanings from each other.

In a hypothetical Python++ that had all the variations implemented, they
would have a different range of application:

   >>> i = 2; j = 3   # want an even Natural number less than 100...
   >>> if 0 < i < 100: print 'even Natural'
   ...
   even Natural
   >>> if 0 < j < 100: print 'even Natural'   # gives wrong answer
   ...
   even Natural
   >>> if i in [2,4 .. 98]: print 'even Natural'
   ...
   even Natural
   >>> if j in [2,4 .. 98]: print 'even Natural' # gives correct answer
   ...
   >>> if i in 100:  print 'even Natural' # I have no idea what this MEANS!
   ...
   ?????

Those are step-size issues.  But even with step-sizes of one, a similar
problem comes up:

   >>> x = 3.5
   >>> if 0 <= x < 5: print 'in range [0 .. 5)'
   ...
   in range [0 .. 5)
   >>> if x in [0,1 .. 4]: print 'in range [0 .. 5)'
   ...
   >>> if x in 5:  print 'in range [0 .. 5)' # No idea what this MEANS!
   ...
   ?????

Given the BDFL's goal of Int/Float/Rational unification in some
far-future, the integer-only 'min <= x < max' syntax looks particularly
bad.

Yours, Lulu...