[OT] range() for unix shell

[Skip Montanaro]

    Paul> Today, struck by the similarity between sh and python's for loops,
    Paul> and facing an example which required us to generate a range of
    Paul> numbers from boundary parameters, I wrote a sh range function. It
    Paul> works just like python's range() function (allowing for syntactic
    Paul> differences).

Why stoop to sh?  Here's a range command I've used for years written in
Python. ;-)

#!/usr/local/bin/python

import sys, string

def usage():

    print """
usage:
        range high
        range high step
        range low high step

  In first case, low == 0 is implied
  If no step size is given, 1 is assumed
"""
    exit

low = 0
step = 1
if len(sys.argv) == 2:
    high = int(sys.argv[1])
elif len(sys.argv) == 3:
    high = int(sys.argv[1])
    step = int(sys.argv[2])
elif len(sys.argv) == 4:
    low = int(sys.argv[1])
    high = int(sys.argv[2])
    step = int(sys.argv[3])
else:
    usage

print string.join(map(str, range(low, high, step)))