[Chad Netzer]
The main issue, as I see it, is substituting some form of lazy range iterator, for the range() function, "behind the curtains" as it were. People could gain the benefits of xrange() (less memory consumption, probably faster looping), without having to promote the continued use of xrange().
The SF patch manager has a workable implementation of your idea:
www.python.org/sf/738094 for i in range(N) optimization
The jury is still out on whether it is an elegant, brilliant patch or a horrendous hack.
Raymond Hettinger