Why or why not?
A good example given in book: Practical Python By Magnus Lie Hetland
>>> zip(range(5), xrange(100000000))
[(0, 0), (1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 3), (4, 4)]
I wouldn’t recommend using range instead of xrange in the preceding example—although only the first five numbers are needed, range calculates all the numbers, and that may take a lot of time. With xrange, this isn’t a problem because it calculates only those numbers needed.
Yes I read @Brian's answer: In python 3, range() is a generator anyway and xrange() does not exist.