What is xrange?

[Ethan Furman]

Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 21:36:41 +1000, Steven D'Aprano
> <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> declaimed the following in
> gmane.comp.python.general:
> 
> 
>> Probably because nobody thought about it, but if it had been proposed to
>> change xrange into an iterator, I'm pretty confident that the suggestion
>> would have been rejected. xrange objects might be lazily generated, but
>> they're also sequence types: you can get their length, and you can index
>> them. (However you can't slice them.) Iterators are not sequence types:
>> they aren't indexable and you can't get their length.
>>
> 	Ah, but what did they change range() into -- I seem to recall
> reading the Python 3.x turned the regular range() into something else...
> (from Python <3.x returning a full list)

 From the What's New docs, in the Views And Iterators Instead Of Lists 
section:

range() now behaves like xrange() used to behave, except it works with 
values of arbitrary size. The latter no longer exists.

~Ethan~