[Python-Dev] Lukewarm about range literals (original) (raw)

Greg Ewing greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz
Wed, 30 Aug 2000 14:11:41 +1200 (NZST)

I doubt there would be much problem adding ".." as a token either.

If we're going to use any sort of ellipsis syntax here, I think it would be highly preferable to use the ellipsis token we've already got. I can't see any justification for having two different ellipsis-like tokens in the language, when there would be no ambiguity in using one for both purposes.

What we really want I think is something that evokes the following in the mind of the reader

for i from START to END incrementing by STEP:

Am I right in thinking that the main motivation here is to clean up the "for i in range(len(a))" idiom? If so, what's wrong with a built-in:

def indices(a): return range(len(a))

Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+ University of Canterbury, | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a | Christchurch, New Zealand | wholly-owned subsidiary of USA Inc. | greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz +--------------------------------------+