question on list comprehensions

[Alex Martelli]

Bengt Richter <bokr at oz.net> wrote:
   ...
> >>     i = 0
> >>     while i < 5000000:
> >>         res [0] = res [0] + i
> >>         i = i + 1
> >> 
> >> Takes less than 2 seconds on my laptop.
> >
> >Sure, this is fine, but low-level twiddling with indices isn't all that
> >nice.  A compact alternative such as
> >
> >    res[0] = sum(xrange(5000000))
   ...
> As I'm sure you know, sum(xrange(n)) is pretty predictable:

Of course (Gauss is said to have proven that theorem in primary school,
to solve just such a summation which the teacher had posed to the class
to get -- the teacher hoped -- some longer time of quiet;-).

If I recall correctly, you can generally find closed-form solutions for
summations of polynomials in i.  But I had assumed that the poster meant
his code to stand for the summation of some generic nonpolynomial form
in i, and just wanted to contrast his lower-level approach with a
higher-level and more concise one -- essentially teaching Python, not
number theory;-).


Alex