In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Erik Max Francis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Alan Morgan wrote: > >> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, >> Giovanni Bajo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >>>Because you assume that the only use-case of range() is within a for-loop. >>>range() is a builtin function that can be used in any Python expression. For >>>instance: >>> >>>RED, GREEN, BLUE, WHITE, BLACK = range(5) >> >> Hmmm, this worked fine when I used xrange as well. Am I missing something? > >Not in your use case. Tuple unpacking will iterate, and so it doesn't >matter whether it's an actual list or an iterator: > > >>> a, b, c = xrange(3) > >>> a >0 > >>> b >1 > >>> c >2 > >There are certainly contexts where a sequence and its iterator are not >interchangeable. You missed an obvious one: > > >>> range(3) == xrange(3) >False
I thought that one was sufficiently obvious as not to need mentioning. There was never any argument that range() and xrange() returned different things; the question (as I understood it) was if you could generally use the things they return in the same way and not *care* about the difference (the answer being "Yes, except when you can't"). Alan -- Defendit numerus -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
