Python 'for' loop is memory inefficient

[Mark Lawrence]

Dr. Phillip M. Feldman wrote:
> I wrote the following correct but inefficient test of primality for purposes
> of demonstrating that the simplest algorithm is often not the most
> efficient.  But, when I try to run the following code with a value of n that
> is large enough to produce a significant amount of running time, I get an
> out-of-memory error!
> 
> def is_prime(n):
>    for j in range(2,n):
>       if (n % j) == 0: return False
>    return True
> 
> It seems as though Python is actually expanding range(2,n) into a list of
> numbers, even though this is incredibly wasteful of memory. There should be
> a looping mechanism that generates the index variable values incrementally
> as they are needed.
I have a strong suspicion that you will find hints in the Python 
documentation that this has already been addressed.  Perhaps you could 
try reading before posting?

-- 
Kindest regards.

Mark Lawrence.