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A comment on Just why did people start using Python anyway?. Parent comment

Re:Just why did people start using Python anyway? by abstractbill on Thursday October 09, 2008 @11:20AM (#327889)
That's not a good idiom, because it only allows you to loop over small ranges:

  >>> for i in range(1000000000):
  ...     print i
  ... 
  python2.4(1261) malloc: *** vm_allocate(size=4000002048) failed (error code=3)
  python2.4(1261) malloc: *** error: can't allocate region
  python2.4(1261) malloc: *** set a breakpoint in szone_error to debug
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  MemoryError
Why attempt to allocate such a large list when you just want to do something several times?
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Re:Just why did people start using Python anyway? by oofoe on Thursday October 09, 2008 @12:33PM (#327965)
for i in xrange(1000000000): print i

xrange() addresses the problem you describe and has been in Python since, like, forever. However, range() is nicer for learning the language, since it's easy to see how it composes into a list.

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Re:Just why did people start using Python anyway? by abstractbill on Thursday October 09, 2008 @12:41PM (#327977)
Yes, I know. It's just bad that people are taught one way of iterating, and then may or may not learn the right way at some later time.
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