> Matlab uses the = version but only allows ranges on the right hand side
Not quite, you can use other "iterables" (not that Matlab has a very formal definition of the term) in Matlab for loops like arbitrary vectors or cell arrays or matrices, but it's very particular about looping through by column. So Matlab's for i=x ... end does what you expect if x is a row vector, but only performs one iteration if x is a column vector, setting i to that entire vector. I suspect this behavior is closely coupled to the reason ranges in Matlab are created as row vectors. And we're all very happy to put these Matlab quirks behind us.
