Arithmetic sequences in Python

[Szabolcs Nagy]

i would love to see a nice, clear syntax instead of
for i in xrange(start, stop, step): ...

because xrange is ugly and iteration over int sequences are important.
we don't need a range() alternative ( [0:10] or [0..10] )
(because no one would ever use range() if there were a nice
integer-for-loop)

there was a proposal (http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0284.html):
for start <= i < stop: ...
but in this way you cannot specify the step parameter and it has some
problems when used in list comprehension.

pep 204 like syntax would be:
for i in (start:stop:step): ...
it is much nicer than xrange, but probably it has some inconsistency
with slicing
(eg (:3)=xrange(3), (-3:)=itertools.count(-3), (:-3)=?, (3::-1)=? )

your .. approach:
for i in (start, start+step .. stop): ...
here start written down twice if it's referred by a name (and if start
is a function call it's evaluated twice)
imho without a step it looks nice:
for i in (start .. stop): ...
but a new syntax would be good only if it can entirely replace the old
one (which then can be made deprecated).