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

Question

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

Answer 1

range(x,y) returns a list of each number in between x and y if you use a for loop, then range is slower. In fact, range has a bigger Index range. range(x.y) will print out a list of all the numbers in between x and y

xrange(x,y) returns xrange(x,y) but if you used a for loop, then xrange is faster. xrange has a smaller Index range. xrange will not only print out xrange(x,y) but it will still keep all the numbers that are in it.

[In] range(1,10)
[Out] [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
[In] xrange(1,10)
[Out] xrange(1,10)

If you use a for loop, then it would work

[In] for i in range(1,10):
        print i
[Out] 1
      2
      3
      4
      5
      6
      7
      8
      9
[In] for i in xrange(1,10):
         print i
[Out] 1
      2
      3
      4
      5
      6
      7
      8
      9

There isn't much difference when using loops, though there is a difference when just printing it!