What is the difference between range and xrange functions in Python 2.X?

by

Apparently xrange is faster but I have no idea why it’s faster (and no proof besides the anecdotal so far that it is faster) or what besides that is different about

for i in range(0, 20):
for i in xrange(0, 20):

28 s
28

In Python 2.x:

  • range creates a list, so if you do range(1, 10000000) it creates a list in memory with 9999999 elements.

  • xrange is a sequence object that evaluates lazily.

In Python 3:

  • range does the equivalent of Python 2’s xrange. To get the list, you have to explicitly use list(range(...)).
  • xrange no longer exists.

Leave a Comment