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

Instead, it says that the step argument cannot be zero, which I did not expect.

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)) # []

Answer 2

Suprised no-one has yet mentioned the recommended solution in the Python 3 docs:

See also:

• The linspace recipe shows how to implement a lazy version of range that suitable for floating point applications.

Once defined, the recipe is easy to use and does not require numpy or any other external libraries, but functions like numpy.linspace(). Note that rather than a step argument, the third num argument specifies the number of desired values, for example:

print(linspace(0, 10, 5))
# linspace(0, 10, 5)
print(list(linspace(0, 10, 5)))
# [0.0, 2.5, 5.0, 7.5, 10]

I quote a modified version of the full Python 3 recipe from Andrew Barnert below:

import collections.abc
import numbers

class linspace(collections.abc.Sequence):
    """linspace(start, stop, num) -> linspace object

    Return a virtual sequence of num numbers from start to stop (inclusive).

    If you need a half-open range, use linspace(start, stop, num+1)[:-1].
    """
    def __init__(self, start, stop, num):
        if not isinstance(num, numbers.Integral) or num <= 1:
            raise ValueError('num must be an integer > 1')
        self.start, self.stop, self.num = start, stop, num
        self.step = (stop-start)/(num-1)
    def __len__(self):
        return self.num
    def __getitem__(self, i):
        if isinstance(i, slice):
            return [self[x] for x in range(*i.indices(len(self)))]
        if i < 0:
            i = self.num + i
        if i >= self.num:
            raise IndexError('linspace object index out of range')
        if i == self.num-1:
            return self.stop
        return self.start + i*self.step
    def __repr__(self):
        return '{}({}, {}, {})'.format(type(self).__name__,
                                       self.start, self.stop, self.num)
    def __eq__(self, other):
        if not isinstance(other, linspace):
            return False
        return ((self.start, self.stop, self.num) ==
                (other.start, other.stop, other.num))
    def __ne__(self, other):
        return not self==other
    def __hash__(self):
        return hash((type(self), self.start, self.stop, self.num))

Answer 3

I am only a beginner, but I had the same problem, when simulating some calculations. Here is how I attempted to work this out, which seems to be working with decimal steps.

I am also quite lazy and so I found it hard to write my own range function.

Basically what I did is changed my xrange(0.0, 1.0, 0.01) to xrange(0, 100, 1) and used the division by 100.0 inside the loop. I was also concerned, if there will be rounding mistakes. So I decided to test, whether there are any. Now I heard, that if for example 0.01 from a calculation isn't exactly the float 0.01 comparing them should return False (if I am wrong, please let me know).

So I decided to test if my solution will work for my range by running a short test:

for d100 in xrange(0, 100, 1):
    d = d100 / 100.0
    fl = float("0.00"[:4 - len(str(d100))] + str(d100))
    print d, "=", fl , d == fl

And it printed True for each.

Now, if I'm getting it totally wrong, please let me know.

Answer 4

This is my solution to get ranges with float steps.
Using this function it's not necessary to import numpy, nor install it.
I'm pretty sure that it could be improved and optimized. Feel free to do it and post it here.

from __future__ import division
from math import log

def xfrange(start, stop, step):

    old_start = start #backup this value

    digits = int(round(log(10000, 10)))+1 #get number of digits
    magnitude = 10**digits
    stop = int(magnitude * stop) #convert from 
    step = int(magnitude * step) #0.1 to 10 (e.g.)

    if start == 0:
        start = 10**(digits-1)
    else:
        start = 10**(digits)*start

    data = []   #create array

    #calc number of iterations
    end_loop = int((stop-start)//step)
    if old_start == 0:
        end_loop += 1

    acc = start

    for i in xrange(0, end_loop):
        data.append(acc/magnitude)
        acc += step

    return data

print xfrange(1, 2.1, 0.1)
print xfrange(0, 1.1, 0.1)
print xfrange(-1, 0.1, 0.1)

The output is:

[1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, 2.0]
[0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 1.1]
[-1.0, -0.9, -0.8, -0.7, -0.6, -0.5, -0.4, -0.3, -0.2, -0.1, 0.0]

Answer 5

Here's a solution using itertools:

import itertools

def seq(start, end, step):
    if step == 0:
        raise ValueError("step must not be 0")
    sample_count = int(abs(end - start) / step)
    return itertools.islice(itertools.count(start, step), sample_count)

Usage Example:

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

Answer 6

You can use this function:

def frange(start,end,step):
    return map(lambda x: x*step, range(int(start*1./step),int(end*1./step)))