Arithmetic sequences in Python

[Gregory Petrosyan]

Please visit http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0204.html first.

As you can see, PEP 204 was rejected, mostly because of not-so-obvious
syntax. But IMO the idea behind this pep is very nice. So, maybe
there's a reason to adopt slightly modified Haskell's syntax? Something
like

[1,3..10] --> [1,3,5,7,9]
(1,3..10) --> same values as above, but return generator instead of
list
[1..10] --> [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
(1 ..) --> 'infinite' generator that yield 1,2,3 and so on
(-3,-5 ..) --> 'infinite' generator that yield -3,-5,-7 and so on

So,
1) "[]" means list, "()" means generator
2) the "start" is required, "step" and "end" are optional.

Also, this can be nicely integrated with enumerations (if they will
appear in python). Haskell is also example of such integration.

 

[Bas]

I like the use of the colon as in the PEP better: it is consistant with
the slice notation and also with the colon operator in Matlab.

I like the general idea and I would probably use it a lot if available,
but the functionality is already there with range and irange.

Bas

 

[Paul Rubin]

As you can see, PEP 204 was rejected, mostly because of not-so-obvious
syntax. But IMO the idea behind this pep is very nice. So, maybe
there's a reason to adopt slightly modified Haskell's syntax?

I like this with some issues: Python loops tend to be 0-based, so
while it's convenient to express the sequence [1..n], what you usually
want is [0..(n-1)] which is uglier.

If you want to count down from f(n) to zero, in Haskell you might say

[b, b-1 .. 0] where b=f(n)

There's no "where" in Python, so what do you do?

[f(n)-1, f(n)-2 .. 0]

evaluates f twice (and might not even get the same result both times),
while the traditional

xrange(f(n)-1, -1, -1)

only evaluates it once but is IMO repulsive.

Anyway I've never liked having to use range or xrange to control
Python loops. It's just kludgy and confusing. So I think your idea
has potential but there's issues that have to be worked out.

 

[Gregory Petrosyan]

_Consistentsy_ is what BDFL rejects, if I understand pep right. As for
me, it's not too god to have similar syntax for really different tasks.
And [1:10] is really not obvious, while [1..10] is.

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

Please visit http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0204.html first.

As you can see, PEP 204 was rejected, mostly because of not-so-obvious
syntax. But IMO the idea behind this pep is very nice. So, maybe
there's a reason to adopt slightly modified Haskell's syntax? Something
like

[1,3..10] --> [1,3,5,7,9]

-1 on the introduction of new syntax. Any new syntax.

(I reserve the right to change my mind if somebody comes up with syntax
that I like, but in general, I'm *very* negative on adding to Python's
clean syntax.)

For finite sequences, your proposal adds nothing new to existing
solutions like range and xrange. The only added feature this proposal
introduces is infinite iterators, and they aren't particularly hard to
make:

def arithmetic_sequence(start, step=1):
yield start
while 1:
start += step
yield start

The equivalent generator for a geometric sequence is left as an exercise
for the reader.

If your proposal included support for ranges of characters, I'd be more
interested.

 

[Paul Rubin]

For finite sequences, your proposal adds nothing new to existing
solutions like range and xrange.

Oh come on, [5,4,..0] is much easier to read than range(5,-1,-1).

The only added feature this proposal
introduces is infinite iterators, and they aren't particularly hard to
make:

def arithmetic_sequence(start, step=1):
yield start
while 1:
start += step
yield start

Well, that would be itertools.count(start, step) but in general a simple
expression is nicer than 5 lines of code.

If your proposal included support for ranges of characters, I'd be more
interested.

There's something to be said for that. Should ['a'..'z'] be a list or
a string?

 

[Xavier Morel]

There's something to be said for that. Should ['a'..'z'] be a list or
a string?

To me, the most obvious result would be either a range object as a
result, or always a list/generator of objects (to stay perfectly
consistent). If a range of numbers translate into a list of numbers,
then a range of characters should likewise translate to a list of
characters, and a join would be required to get a regular string. This
also adds more consistency between the two proposals of the initial post
(e.g. list-based range and generator-based range), for while the
list-based range could be expanded into a string a generator-based one
couldn't/shouldn't, and the abstraction breaks (because two constructs
that should be more or less equivalent become extremely different and
can't be swapped transparently).

This would also be consistent with other languages providing a native
"range" object such as Ruby or or Ada ranges.

The only thing that bothers me about the initial proposal is that there
would not, in fact, be any "range object", but merely a syntactic sugar
for list/generator creation. Not that I really mind it, but, well,
syntactic sugar for the purpose of syntactic sugar really doesn't bring
much to the table.

For those who'd need the (0..n-1) behavior, Ruby features something that
I find quite elegant (if not perfectly obvious at first), (first..last)
provides a range from first to last with both boundaries included, but
(first...last) (notice the 3 periods) excludes the end object of the
range definition ('a'..'z') is the range from 'a' to 'z' while
('a'...'z') only ranges from 'a' to 'y').

 

[bearophileHUGS]

Ranges of letters are quite useful, they are used a lot in Delphi/Ada
languages:
"a", "b", "c", "d", "e"...

I like the syntax [1..n], it looks natural enough to me, but I think
the Ruby syntax with ... isn't much natural.
To avoid bugs the following two lines must have the same meaning:
[1..n-1]
[1..(n-1)]

If you don't want to change the Python syntax then maybe the
range/xrange can be extended for chars too:

xrange("a", "z")
range("z", "a", -1)

But for char ranges I think people usually don't want to stop to "y"
(what if you want to go to "z" too? This is much more common than
wanting to stop to "y"), so another possibility is to create a new
function like xrange that generates the last element too:

interval("a", "c") equals to iter("abc")
interval(1, 3) equals to iter([1,2,3])
interval(2, 0, -1) equals to iter([2,1,0])

I have created such interval function, and I use it now and then.

Bye,
bearophile

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

For those who'd need the (0..n-1) behavior, Ruby features something that
I find quite elegant (if not perfectly obvious at first), (first..last)
provides a range from first to last with both boundaries included, but
(first...last) (notice the 3 periods)

No, no I didn't.

Sheesh, that just *screams* "Off By One Errors!!!". Python deliberately
uses a simple, consistent system of indexing from the start to one past
the end specifically to help prevent signpost errors, and now some folks
want to undermine that.

*shakes head in amazement*

 

[Alex Martelli]

while the traditional

xrange(f(n)-1, -1, -1)

only evaluates it once but is IMO repulsive.

Yep, reversed(range(f(n))) is MUCH better.


Alex

 

[Alex Martelli]

For finite sequences, your proposal adds nothing new to existing
solutions like range and xrange.

Oh come on, [5,4,..0] is much easier to read than range(5,-1,-1).

But not easier than reversed(range(6)) [[the 5 in one of the two
expressions in your sentence has to be an offbyone;-)]]


Alex

 

[Alex Martelli]

No, no I didn't.

Sheesh, that just *screams* "Off By One Errors!!!". Python deliberately
uses a simple, consistent system of indexing from the start to one past
the end specifically to help prevent signpost errors, and now some folks
want to undermine that.

*shakes head in amazement*

Agreed. *IF* we truly needed an occasional "up to X *INCLUDED*"
sequence, it should be in a syntax that can't FAIL to be noticed, such
as range(X, endincluded=True).


Alex

 

[Xavier Morel]

No, no I didn't.

Sheesh, that just *screams* "Off By One Errors!!!". Python deliberately
uses a simple, consistent system of indexing from the start to one past
the end specifically to help prevent signpost errors, and now some folks
want to undermine that.

*shakes head in amazement*

Steven, I never said that Python should use this syntax, I merely showed
how it was done in Ruby.

It's nothing more than a ... basis of discussion... not a "I want that
!!ONE" post (if I did, i'd be using Ruby and posting on c.l.r)

(and you didn't what by the way?)

 

[Xavier Morel]

No, no I didn't.

Sheesh, that just *screams* "Off By One Errors!!!". Python deliberately
uses a simple, consistent system of indexing from the start to one past
the end specifically to help prevent signpost errors, and now some folks
want to undermine that.

*shakes head in amazement*

Steven, I never said that Python should use this syntax, I merely showed
how it was done in Ruby.

It's nothing more than a ... basis of discussion... not a "I want that
!!ONE" post (if I did, i'd be using Ruby and posting on c.l.r)

(and you didn't what by the way?)

Ok scratch that, you didn't notice the 3 periods.

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

For finite sequences, your proposal adds nothing new to existing
solutions like range and xrange.

Oh come on, [5,4,..0] is much easier to read than range(5,-1,-1).

Only in isolation, and arguably not even then. Or do you think that Perl
is much easier to read than Python simply because you can write your
programs in fewer characters?

It looks too much like the list [5,4,0], and is easy to make typos:
[5,4,.0] gives you no syntax error but very different results.

The meaning isn't particular clear: is it supposed to be [start, stop,
step] (the natural expectation for those used to Python slices and ranges)
or [start, next, stop]? It is actually the second, but go back to the
original post by Gregory: after giving examples, he still wrongly
described his proposal as having a "step" parameter. There is no step
parameter -- the step is implied, by subtracting start from next. Such
confusion doesn't bode well.

Python indexing deliberately goes to one-past-the-end counting for a
reason: it helps prevent off-by-one signpost errors. This syntax goes
against that decision, and adds one more thing to memorise about Python:
the end index is not included in the list, except for arithmetic
sequences, where it is, sometimes but not necessarily. In [5,6,10] the end
index 10 is included; in [5,7,10] it isn't.

You've picked the most awkward example of range, I admit. But let's look
at a few others:

[0,..9] versus range(10)
[55, ...73] versus range(55, 74)
[1, 3, ..len(mystr)] versus range(1, len(mystr)+1, 2)
[55, 65, 295] versus range(55, 296, 10)

How often do you find yourself knowing the first two terms of a sequence
but not the step size anyway? Is that a common use case?

Well, that would be itertools.count(start, step) but in general a simple
expression is nicer than 5 lines of code.

I didn't say that my generator was the only way to produce the required
result, I was pointing out how simple it is. Yes, itertools is the way to
go for this sort of thing.

If your proposal included support for ranges of characters, I'd be more
interested.

There's something to be said for that. Should ['a'..'z'] be a list or a
string?

It uses [ something ] syntax, so for consistency with lists and list
comprehensions it should be a list.

But a string would be more practical, since list(['a'..'z']) is easier and
more intuitive than ''.join(['a'..'z']). But I'm not sure that it is
*that* much more practical to deserve breaking the reader's expectation.

So I think the best thing would be to create itertools.chars('a', 'z') or
similar, not new syntax.

 

[Roy Smith]

Agreed. *IF* we truly needed an occasional "up to X *INCLUDED*"
sequence, it should be in a syntax that can't FAIL to be noticed, such
as range(X, endincluded=True).

How about...

for i in (0..x]:
blah

 

[Alex Martelli]

Agreed. *IF* we truly needed an occasional "up to X *INCLUDED*"
sequence, it should be in a syntax that can't FAIL to be noticed, such
as range(X, endincluded=True).

How about...

for i in (0..x]:
blah

The difference between a round parenthesis and a square bracket can
EASILY be overlooked, depending partly on what font you're using.


Alex

 

[Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch]

Agreed. *IF* we truly needed an occasional "up to X *INCLUDED*"
sequence, it should be in a syntax that can't FAIL to be noticed, such
as range(X, endincluded=True).

How about...

for i in (0..x]:
blah

That would break most editors "highlight matching brace" functionality.

Ciao,
Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch

 

[Szabolcs Nagy]

i would love to see a nice, clear syntax instead of
for i in xrange(start, stop, step): ...

because xrange is ugly and iteration over int sequences are important.
we don't need a range() alternative ( [0:10] or [0..10] )
(because no one would ever use range() if there were a nice
integer-for-loop)

there was a proposal (http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0284.html):
for start <= i < stop: ...
but in this way you cannot specify the step parameter and it has some
problems when used in list comprehension.

pep 204 like syntax would be:
for i in (start:stop:step): ...
it is much nicer than xrange, but probably it has some inconsistency
with slicing
(eg 3)=xrange(3), (-3=itertools.count(-3), -3)=?, (3::-1)=? )

your .. approach:
for i in (start, start+step .. stop): ...
here start written down twice if it's referred by a name (and if start
is a function call it's evaluated twice)
imho without a step it looks nice:
for i in (start .. stop): ...
but a new syntax would be good only if it can entirely replace the old
one (which then can be made deprecated).

 

[Paul Rubin]

Oh come on, [5,4,..0] is much easier to read than range(5,-1,-1).

But not easier than reversed(range(6))

Heh, I like that, and reversed(xrange(6)) appears to do the right
thing too. I didn't know about __reversed__ before.

[[the 5 in one of the two
expressions in your sentence has to be an offbyone;-)]]

Are you sure? I could easily be missing something, since it's easy
to be offbyone with this stuff, but when I try it I get:

Python 2.4.1 (#1, May 16 2005, 15:19:29)
[GCC 4.0.0 20050512 (Red Hat 4.0.0-5)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>> range(5,-1,-1) [5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0]
>>>

and (skipping the ascii art banner):

Hugs 98: Based on the Haskell 98 standard
Haskell 98 mode: Restart with command line option -98 to enable extensions
Type :? for help
Hugs.Base> [5,4..0]
[5,4,3,2,1,0]
Hugs.Base>

which is equivalent. (Of course, having to use 6 instead of 5 in
the range(...) version invites an offbyone error).