A Python 2.7 programming tutorial

The term arithmetic progression refers to a sequence of numbers such that the difference between any two successive elements is the same. Examples: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]; [10, 20, 30, 40]; [88, 77, 66, 55, 44, 33].

Python's built-in range() function returns a list containing an arithmetic progression. There are three different ways to call this function.

To generate the sequence [0, 1, 2, ..., n-1], use the form range(n).

>>> range(6)
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> range(2)
[0, 1]
>>> range(0)
[]

Note that the sequence will never include the value of the argument n; it stops one value short.

To generate a sequence [i, i+1, i+2, ..., n-1], use the form range(i, n):

>>> range(5,11)
[5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
>>> range(1,5)
[1, 2, 3, 4]

To generate an arithmetic progression with a difference d between successive values, use the three-argument form range(i, n, d). The resulting sequence will be [i, i+d, i+2*d, ...], and will stop before it reaches a value equal to n.

>>> range ( 10, 100, 10 )
[10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90]
>>> range ( 100, 0, -10 )
[100, 90, 80, 70, 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10]
>>> range ( 8, -1, -1 )
[8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0]