How to generate exponentially increasing range in Python

Question

I want to test the performance of some code using an exponentially increasing value. So that as an extra digit is added to the numbers_size the increment is multiplied by 1

Answer 1

The simplest thing to do is to use a linear sequence of exponents:

for e in range(1, 90):
    i = int(10**(e/10.0))
    test(i)

You can abstract the sequence into its own generator:

def exponent_range(max, nsteps):
    max_e = math.log10(max)
    for e in xrange(1, nsteps+1):
        yield int(10**(e*max_e/nsteps))

for i in exponent_range(10**9, nsteps=100):
    test(i)

Answer 2

To produce the same numbers as your code:

numbers_sizes = (i*10**exp for exp in range(2, 9) for i in range(1, 10))
for n in numbers_sizes:
    test(n)