[Python-Dev] range objects in 3.x

[Guido van Rossum]

On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 10:11 AM, Alexander Belopolsky
<alexander.belopolsky at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 1:03 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> ..
>> Um, I think you better read the thread. :-) I successfully argued that
>> mimicking the behavior of range() for floats is a bad idea, and that
>> we need to come up with a name for an API that takes start/stop/count
>> arguments instead of start/stop/step.
>
> The name "frange" does not necessarily imply that we have to mimic the
> API completely.  As long as frange(10.0) and frange(1.0, 10.0) works
> as expected while addressing floating point subtleties through
> optional arguments and documentation, I don't see why it can't be
> called frange() *and* support count.

But I do. :-) Calling it frange() is pretty much *begging* people to
assume that the 3rd parameter has the same meaning as for range().
Now, there are a few cases where that doesn't matter, e.g. frange(0,
100, 10) will do the expected thing under both interpretations, but
frange(0, 100, 5) will not.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)