[Tutor] v.00001

[Jacob S.]

I should have thought of that! Here I looked at the concept of generators, 
what they can do, and totally overlooked a user defined range type function 
that allows floats. Any reason why range doesn't? Is it for speed, or to 
keep the arguments pure (without floating point errors)?

Jacob

> There are some cute things we can do with some advanced Python.  You don't
> have to understand this yet, but here's a variation of your program:
>
> ###
>>>> def stepper(start, end, step):
> ...     i = start
> ...     while i <= end:
> ...         yield i
> ...         i = i + step
> ...
>>>> from math import pi, cos
>>>> for z in stepper(0, 2*pi, pi/6):
> ...     print z, cos(z)
> ...
> 0 1.0
> 0.523598775598 0.866025403784
> 1.0471975512 0.5
> 1.57079632679 6.12303176911e-17
> 2.09439510239 -0.5
> 2.61799387799 -0.866025403784
> 3.14159265359 -1.0
> 3.66519142919 -0.866025403784
> 4.18879020479 -0.5
> 4.71238898038 -1.83690953073e-16
> 5.23598775598 0.5
> 5.75958653158 0.866025403784
> ###
>
>
> stepper() acts like the range() function, but it can work on floating
> point numbers.  range (and xrange) only work on integers:
>
>    http://www.python.org/doc/lib/built-in-funcs.html#l2h-56
>
> If we want to do some stepping across a range with floats, we can use the
> stepper() definition above.
>
>
> Best of wishes to you!
>
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