range() for floats

Question

Is there a range() equivalent for floats in Python?

>>> range(0.5,5,1.5)
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> range(0.5,5,0.5)

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#10>", line 1, in <module>
    range(0.5,5,0.5)
ValueError: range() step argument must not be zero

Answer 1

You can either use:

[x / 10.0 for x in range(5, 50, 15)]

or use lambda / map:

map(lambda x: x/10.0, range(5, 50, 15))

Answer 2

Why Is There No Floating Point Range Implementation In The Standard Library?

As made clear by all the posts here, there is no floating point version of range(). That said, the omission makes sense if we consider that the range() function is often used as an index (and of course, that means an accessor) generator. So, when we call range(0,40), we're in effect saying we want 40 values starting at 0, up to 40, but non-inclusive of 40 itself.

When we consider that index generation is as much about the number of indices as it is their values, the use of a float implementation of range() in the standard library makes less sense. For example, if we called the function frange(0, 10, 0.25), we would expect both 0 and 10 to be included, but that would yield a vector with 41 values.

Thus, an frange() function depending on its use will always exhibit counter intuitive behavior; it either has too many values as perceived from the indexing perspective or is not inclusive of a number that reasonably should be returned from the mathematical perspective.

The Mathematical Use Case

With that said, as discussed, numpy.linspace() performs the generation with the mathematical perspective nicely:

numpy.linspace(0, 10, 41)
array([  0.  ,   0.25,   0.5 ,   0.75,   1.  ,   1.25,   1.5 ,   1.75,
         2.  ,   2.25,   2.5 ,   2.75,   3.  ,   3.25,   3.5 ,   3.75,
         4.  ,   4.25,   4.5 ,   4.75,   5.  ,   5.25,   5.5 ,   5.75,
         6.  ,   6.25,   6.5 ,   6.75,   7.  ,   7.25,   7.5 ,   7.75,
         8.  ,   8.25,   8.5 ,   8.75,   9.  ,   9.25,   9.5 ,   9.75,  10.
])

The Indexing Use Case

And for the indexing perspective, I've written a slightly different approach with some tricksy string magic that allows us to specify the number of decimal places.

# Float range function - string formatting method
def frange_S (start, stop, skip = 1.0, decimals = 2):
    for i in range(int(start / skip), int(stop / skip)):
        yield float(("%0." + str(decimals) + "f") % (i * skip))

Similarly, we can also use the built-in round function and specify the number of decimals:

# Float range function - rounding method
def frange_R (start, stop, skip = 1.0, decimals = 2):
    for i in range(int(start / skip), int(stop / skip)):
        yield round(i * skip, ndigits = decimals)

A Quick Comparison & Performance

Of course, given the above discussion, these functions have a fairly limited use case. Nonetheless, here's a quick comparison:

def compare_methods (start, stop, skip):

    string_test  = frange_S(start, stop, skip)
    round_test   = frange_R(start, stop, skip)

    for s, r in zip(string_test, round_test):
        print(s, r)

compare_methods(-2, 10, 1/3)

The results are identical for each:

-2.0 -2.0
-1.67 -1.67
-1.33 -1.33
-1.0 -1.0
-0.67 -0.67
-0.33 -0.33
0.0 0.0
...
8.0 8.0
8.33 8.33
8.67 8.67
9.0 9.0
9.33 9.33
9.67 9.67

And some timings:

>>> import timeit

>>> setup = """
... def frange_s (start, stop, skip = 1.0, decimals = 2):
...     for i in range(int(start / skip), int(stop / skip)):
...         yield float(("%0." + str(decimals) + "f") % (i * skip))
... def frange_r (start, stop, skip = 1.0, decimals = 2):
...     for i in range(int(start / skip), int(stop / skip)):
...         yield round(i * skip, ndigits = decimals)
... start, stop, skip = -1, 8, 1/3
... """

>>> min(timeit.Timer('string_test = frange_s(start, stop, skip); [x for x in string_test]', setup=setup).repeat(30, 1000))
0.024284090992296115

>>> min(timeit.Timer('round_test = frange_r(start, stop, skip); [x for x in round_test]', setup=setup).repeat(30, 1000))
0.025324633985292166

Looks like the string formatting method wins by a hair on my system.

The Limitations

And finally, a demonstration of the point from the discussion above and one last limitation:

# "Missing" the last value (10.0)
for x in frange_R(0, 10, 0.25):
    print(x)

0.25
0.5
0.75
1.0
...
9.0
9.25
9.5
9.75

Further, when the skip parameter is not divisible by the stop value, there can be a yawning gap given the latter issue:

# Clearly we know that 10 - 9.43 is equal to 0.57
for x in frange_R(0, 10, 3/7):
    print(x)

0.0
0.43
0.86
1.29
...
8.14
8.57
9.0
9.43

There are ways to address this issue, but at the end of the day, the best approach would probably be to just use Numpy.

Answer 3

A simpler library-less version

Aw, heck -- I'll toss in a simple library-less version. Feel free to improve on it[*]:

def frange(start=0, stop=1, jump=0.1):
    nsteps = int((stop-start)/jump)
    dy = stop-start
    # f(i) goes from start to stop as i goes from 0 to nsteps
    return [start + float(i)*dy/nsteps for i in range(nsteps)]

The core idea is that nsteps is the number of steps to get you from start to stop and range(nsteps) always emits integers so there's no loss of accuracy. The final step is to map [0..nsteps] linearly onto [start..stop].

[*] In particular, frange() returns a list, not a generator. But it sufficed for my needs.