range

The range function returns something, that we can use in a for-in loop to iterate over and we’ll get the expected numbers.

However, if we print the value that we got back from the range function it looks strange. It looks exactly as we called it. This is the representation of the range object.

Unlike in Python 2, here in Python 3 the range function does not return a list of numbers. It returns an object that allows us to iterate over the numbers, but it does not hold the numbers.

rng = range(3, 9, 2)
for num in rng:
    print(num)
print(rng)

Output:

3
5
7
range(3, 9, 2)

range is interesting. We are going to take a closer look in the next few pages.