Looping using iterators with fractional values

[Reinhold Birkenfeld]

Mike Meyer wrote:

> Or - and much safer when dealing with floating point numbers - iterate
> over integers and generate your float values:
> 
> for j in range(1, 9):
>     i = j * .25
>     print "%9.2f" % i

There's a glitch there, though - should be range(1, 10).

Reinhold

PS: I'm wondering whether my genexp approach or this one is preferable.
Readability is equal, I would say, but how about speed?

Brought up a few timeits:

Python 2.3
----------

for i in [x/4.0 for x in range(1, 10)]:   36,9 sec

for j in range(1, 10): i = j * 0.25:      33,7 sec

Python 2.4
----------

for i in (x/4.0 for x in range(1, 10)):   32,5 sec

for j in range(1, 10): i = j * 0.25:      28,4 sec


So what does that tell us?
(a) don't use genexps where there is a simpler approach
(b) Py2.4 rocks!

Reinhold