How to use a decimal range() step value?

Question

Is there a way to step between 0 and 1 by 0.1?

I thought I could do it like the following, but it failed:

for i in range(0, 1, 0.1):
    print i
         


        

Answer 1

My versions use the original range function to create multiplicative indices for the shift. This allows same syntax to the original range function. I have made two versions, one using float, and one using Decimal, because I found that in some cases I wanted to avoid the roundoff drift introduced by the floating point arithmetic.

It is consistent with empty set results as in range/xrange.

Passing only a single numeric value to either function will return the standard range output to the integer ceiling value of the input parameter (so if you gave it 5.5, it would return range(6).)

Edit: the code below is now available as package on pypi: Franges

## frange.py
from math import ceil
# find best range function available to version (2.7.x / 3.x.x)
try:
    _xrange = xrange
except NameError:
    _xrange = range

def frange(start, stop = None, step = 1):
    """frange generates a set of floating point values over the 
    range [start, stop) with step size step

    frange([start,] stop [, step ])"""

    if stop is None:
        for x in _xrange(int(ceil(start))):
            yield x
    else:
        # create a generator expression for the index values
        indices = (i for i in _xrange(0, int((stop-start)/step)))  
        # yield results
        for i in indices:
            yield start + step*i

## drange.py
import decimal
from math import ceil
# find best range function available to version (2.7.x / 3.x.x)
try:
    _xrange = xrange
except NameError:
    _xrange = range

def drange(start, stop = None, step = 1, precision = None):
    """drange generates a set of Decimal values over the
    range [start, stop) with step size step

    drange([start,] stop, [step [,precision]])"""

    if stop is None:
        for x in _xrange(int(ceil(start))):
            yield x
    else:
        # find precision
        if precision is not None:
            decimal.getcontext().prec = precision
        # convert values to decimals
        start = decimal.Decimal(start)
        stop = decimal.Decimal(stop)
        step = decimal.Decimal(step)
        # create a generator expression for the index values
        indices = (
            i for i in _xrange(
                0, 
                ((stop-start)/step).to_integral_value()
            )
        )  
        # yield results
        for i in indices:
            yield float(start + step*i)

## testranges.py
import frange
import drange
list(frange.frange(0, 2, 0.5)) # [0.0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5]
list(drange.drange(0, 2, 0.5, precision = 6)) # [0.0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5]
list(frange.frange(3)) # [0, 1, 2]
list(frange.frange(3.5)) # [0, 1, 2, 3]
list(frange.frange(0,10, -1)) # []