[ xrange can't be changed into a generator ]
This is too bad; I really wish that xrange() could die or be limited entirely to for loops. I wonder if we could put warnings on xrange() uses beyond the most basic...?
Why do we want to do this ? xrange() is still exactly what it was: an object that pretends to be a list of integers. Besides being useful for those who work a lot with ranges, it's a wondeful example on what you can do with Python (even if it isn't actually written in Python :-)
There is exactly *one* idiomatic use of xrange(): for i in xrange(...): ... All other operations supported by the xrange object are very rarely used, and historically their implementation has had obvious bugs that no-one noticed for years.
I see less reason to deprecate xrange than to deprecate the gopherlib, wave/aifc/audiodev, mhlib, netrc and/or robotparser modules.
Those are useful application-area libraries for some folks. The idiomatic xrange() object is useful too. But the advanced features of xrange() are an example of code bloat. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)