[Python-Dev] range objects in 3.x (original) (raw)

Ethan Furman ethan at stoneleaf.us
Tue Sep 27 23:39:43 CEST 2011

Guido van Rossum wrote:

On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 1:21 PM, Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:

Guido van Rossum wrote:

But why offer an API that is an attractive nuisance? I don't think that it is a burden to the user to have to specify "from 0 to 2 inches in 8 steps" instead of "from 0 to 2 inches in 1/4 inch steps". (And what if they tried to say "from 0 to 3 1/4 inches in 1/2 inch steps" ?) And how many steps in "from 37 3/4 inches to 90 1/4 inches" ? I don't want to have to calculate that. That's what computers are for. That's just silly. The number of steps is (stop - start) / step.

Not silly at all -- it begs for an api of (start, stop, step), not (start, stop, count).

Personally, I have no problems with typing either 'step=...' or 'stop=...', but I think losing step as an option is a ahem step backwards.

Ethan

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