Does anyone else use this little idiom?

[Robert Kern]

James Matthews wrote:
> Because 0 is counted therefore i only have to do it 99 times

No, Gabriel is correct. range(n) creates a list of integers starting at 0 and 
going to n-1 (inclusive), not n.


In [1]: range(9)
Out[1]: [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]

In [2]: len(range(9))
Out[2]: 9

In [3]: len(range(1, 9))
Out[3]: 8

In [4]: range(10)
Out[4]: [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

In [5]: len(range(10))
Out[5]: 10


> On Feb 3, 2008 4:38 AM, Gabriel Genellina <gagsl-py2 at yahoo.com.ar 
> <mailto:gagsl-py2 at yahoo.com.ar>> wrote:
> 
>     En Sun, 03 Feb 2008 01:03:43 -0200, James Matthews
>     <nytrokiss at gmail.com <mailto:nytrokiss at gmail.com>>
>     escribió:
> 
>     Sorry to be nitpicking, but people coming from other languages may get
>     confused by the wrong examples:
> 
>      > What i do is a simple range call. for i in range(number of times
>     i want
>      > to repeat something)
>      > I guess it comes from my C days for(i=0;i<100;i++) { or in python
>     for i
>      > in range(99):
> 
>     Should be `for i in range(100)` to match exactly the C loop. Both
>     iterate
>     100 times, with i varying from 0 to 99 inclusive.
> 
>      >>  miller.paul.w at gmail.com <mailto:miller.paul.w at gmail.com> wrote:
>      >>
>      >> > Ruby has a neat little convenience when writing loops where
>     you don't
>      >> > care about the loop index: you just do n.times do { ... some
>      >> > code ... } where n is an integer representing how many times
>     you want
>      >> > to execute "some code."
>      >> >
>      >> > In Python, the direct translation of this is a for loop.  When the
>      >> > index doesn't matter to me, I tend to write it as:
>      >> >
>      >> > for _ in xrange (1,n):
>      >> >    some code
> 
>     Should be `for _ in xrange(n)` to match the Ruby example. Both iterate n
>     times.
> 
>      > On Feb 3, 2008 3:34 AM, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com
>     <mailto:roy at panix.com>> wrote:
>      >
>      >> But, more to the point, I'd try to find variable name which
>     described
>      >> why I was looping, even if I didn't actually use the value in
>     theloop
>      >> body:
> 
>     Me too. Government don't collect taxes by the number of variable names
>     used (yet).
> 
>     --
>     Gabriel Genellina

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
  that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
  an underlying truth."
   -- Umberto Eco