Python Ranges
Rather than being a function, a range is actually an immutable sequence type and is commonly used for looping a specific number of times in for loops.
Creation:
ranges are created using the range constructor. The parameters for the constructor are:
-
start: Inclusive first value of the range (optional integer, defaults to 0). -
stop: Exclusive stop value, range stops when this value or greater would be provided (required integer). -
step: The amount added to the current value to get the next value (optional integer, defaults to 1).
>>> range(10) # Only the stop parameter is required.
range(0, 10)
>>> range(0, 10) # Default for start parameter is 0.
range(0, 10)
>>> range(0, 10, 1) # Default for step is 1\. Start parameter is required if
step is needed.
range(0, 10)
Examples:
Since ranges are iterables they can be passed into the list and tuple constructors to create those types of sequences. Using this fact, we can visualize some examples:
>>> list(range(10)) # range as argument for list constructor.
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> tuple(range(10)) # range as argument for tuple constructor.
(0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
Zero length ranges :
>>> list(range(10, 0)) # start greater than stop with postive step.
[]
>>> list(range(10, 10)) # start equal to stop with postive step.
[]
>>> list(range(10, 10, -1)) # start equal to stop with negative step.
[]
>>> list(range(0, 10, -1)) # start less than stop with negative step.
[]
ranges with step arguments:
>>> list(range(0, 10, 2)) # next value would be 10, stops at 8.
[0, 2, 4, 6, 8]
>>> list(range(0, 10, 3)) # next value would be 12, stops at 9.
[0, 3, 6, 9]
>>> list(range(0, 10, 4)) # next value would be 12, stops at 8.
[0, 4, 8]
>>> list(range(10, 0, -1)) # negative step makes decreasing ranges.
[10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1]
>>> list(range(-5, -30, -3)) # negative integers are valid arguments.
[-5, -8, -11, -14, -17, -20, -23, -26, -29]
Benefits:
The benefit of using range is that regardless of how large of a range specified, only a small amount of memory is needed to store the range , the values for start, stop, and step. The individual values of the ranges are calculated upon iteration.
>>> import sys
>>> a_range = range(1000000)
>>> a_list = list(a_range)
>>> a_tuple = tuple(a_range)
>>> sys.getsizeof(a_range)
48
>>> sys.getsizeof(a_list)
9000112
>>> sys.getsizeof(a_tuple)
8000048