I know that when I use range([start], stop[, step]) or slice([start], stop[, step]), the stop value is not included in the range or slice. But why does it work this way? Is it so that e.g. a range(0, x) or range(x) will contain x many elements? Is it for parallelism with the C for loop idiom, i.e. so that for i in range(start, stop): superficially resembles for (i = start ; i < stop; i++) {? See also Loop backwards using indices for a case study: setting the stop and step values properly can be a bit tricky when trying to get values in descending order. Continue reading...
