iters on ints? (reducing the need for range/xrange)

[Luigi Ballabio]

At 02:59 AM 11/9/01 +0000, Rainer Deyke wrote:
> > A file *IS* a sequence -- although you could just as easily slice it
> > by characters as lines -- or by any arbitrary object for binary files,
> > as Pascal does. If the integer 10 suggests any sort of sequence, it's
> > the singleton sequence containing: 10.
>
>The Pythons docs define "sequence" as something which supports the sequence
>interface.  If 's' is a sequence, then 's[i]' is a defined operation that
>either returns a value or raises 'IndexError' (unless some other error
>occurs).  A file isn't that.

We're talking iterators here, i.e., Python 2.2. iter(file) is a defined 
operation which returns an iterator and "for line in file" is a valid 
construct.

This said, while it makes sense in english to say "do this for every line 
IN this file", it just doesn't sound right to me to say "do this for every 
number IN 10"---even though I've been once familiar with the definitions of 
the set of all integers. I'd rather say "for every number UP TO 10" but 
that would mean introducing a new keyword which I'm not going to suggest, 
not me, sir.

Bye,
         Luigi