From: Austin Ziegler <austin@...>
Date: 2004-01-22T13:11:48+09:00
Subject: Re: New to Python: my impression v. Perl/Ruby

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 05:59:58 +0900, GGarramuno wrote:
> for i in (0..i); something; end
>
>
> to me has a bunch of advantages over times, step and the such.  With the
> above construct you know that: a) i has to be a number b) i has to be
> positive for the loop to run c) there IS a loop after all, as 'for'
> indicates a loop in pretty much every computer language. d) it is more
> efficient as no blocks are created. e) you can change the starting point
> (ie. not start at 0).

Right. But I could do:

('a'..'z').each { |i| ... }

With Ruby, things *don't* need to be numbers to work intelligibly. Also, 
your point d is, um, well, not true. In Ruby, the for construct is syntax 
sugar for another loop. Aside from this, why stick with x.times?

x.upto(y) { |i| ... }

x could be -9 or 32768; as long as y is larger than x, it will work.

This pretty much eliminates all of the objections you had. Once you get used 
to iteration instead of explicit loops, then it's not a big deal to do 
x.times, x.upto(y) or y.downto(x).

-austin
--
austin ziegler    * austin@halostatue.ca * Toronto, ON, Canada
software designer * pragmatic programmer * 2004.01.21
                                         * 23.07.29