Range() for Floats

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))

I used to use numpy.arange but had some complications controlling the number of elements it returns, due to floating point errors. So now I use linspace, e.g.:

>>> import numpy
>>> numpy.linspace(0, 10, num=4)
array([  0.        ,   3.33333333,   6.66666667,  10.        ])

Pylab has frange (a wrapper, actually, for matplotlib.mlab.frange):

>>> import pylab as pl
>>> pl.frange(0.5,5,0.5)
array([ 0.5,  1. ,  1.5,  2. ,  2.5,  3. ,  3.5,  4. ,  4.5,  5. ])

Eagerly evaluated (2.x range):

[x * .5 for x in range(10)]

Lazily evaluated (2.x xrange, 3.x range):

itertools.imap(lambda x: x * .5, xrange(10)) # or range(10) as appropriate

Alternately:

itertools.islice(itertools.imap(lambda x: x * .5, itertools.count()), 10)
# without applying the `islice`, we get an infinite stream of half-integers.

using itertools: lazily evaluated floating point range:

>>> from itertools import count, takewhile
>>> def frange(start, stop, step):
        return takewhile(lambda x: x< stop, count(start, step))

>>> list(frange(0.5, 5, 1.5))
# [0.5, 2.0, 3.5]

I helped add the function numeric_range to the package more-itertools.

more_itertools.numeric_range(start, stop, step) acts like the built in function range but can handle floats, Decimal, and Fraction types.

>>> from more_itertools import numeric_range
>>> tuple(numeric_range(.1, 5, 1))
(0.1, 1.1, 2.1, 3.1, 4.1)

There is no such built-in function, but you can use the following (Python 3 code) to do the job as safe as Python allows you to.

from fractions import Fraction

def frange(start, stop, jump, end=False, via_str=False):
    """
    Equivalent of Python 3 range for decimal numbers.

    Notice that, because of arithmetic errors, it is safest to
    pass the arguments as strings, so they can be interpreted to exact fractions.

    >>> assert Fraction('1.1') - Fraction(11, 10) == 0.0
    >>> assert Fraction( 0.1 ) - Fraction(1, 10) == Fraction(1, 180143985094819840)

    Parameter `via_str` can be set to True to transform inputs in strings and then to fractions.
    When inputs are all non-periodic (in base 10), even if decimal, this method is safe as long
    as approximation happens beyond the decimal digits that Python uses for printing.


    For example, in the case of 0.1, this is the case:

    >>> assert str(0.1) == '0.1'
    >>> assert '%.50f' % 0.1 == '0.10000000000000000555111512312578270211815834045410'


    If you are not sure whether your decimal inputs all have this property, you are better off
    passing them as strings. String representations can be in integer, decimal, exponential or
    even fraction notation.

    >>> assert list(frange(1, 100.0, '0.1', end=True))[-1] == 100.0
    >>> assert list(frange(1.0, '100', '1/10', end=True))[-1] == 100.0
    >>> assert list(frange('1', '100.0', '.1', end=True))[-1] == 100.0
    >>> assert list(frange('1.0', 100, '1e-1', end=True))[-1] == 100.0
    >>> assert list(frange(1, 100.0, 0.1, end=True))[-1] != 100.0
    >>> assert list(frange(1, 100.0, 0.1, end=True, via_str=True))[-1] == 100.0

    """
    if via_str:
        start = str(start)
        stop = str(stop)
        jump = str(jump)
    start = Fraction(start)
    stop = Fraction(stop)
    jump = Fraction(jump)
    while start < stop:
        yield float(start)
        start += jump
    if end and start == stop:
        yield(float(start))

You can verify all of it by running a few assertions:

assert Fraction('1.1') - Fraction(11, 10) == 0.0
assert Fraction( 0.1 ) - Fraction(1, 10) == Fraction(1, 180143985094819840)

assert str(0.1) == '0.1'
assert '%.50f' % 0.1 == '0.10000000000000000555111512312578270211815834045410'

assert list(frange(1, 100.0, '0.1', end=True))[-1] == 100.0
assert list(frange(1.0, '100', '1/10', end=True))[-1] == 100.0
assert list(frange('1', '100.0', '.1', end=True))[-1] == 100.0
assert list(frange('1.0', 100, '1e-1', end=True))[-1] == 100.0
assert list(frange(1, 100.0, 0.1, end=True))[-1] != 100.0
assert list(frange(1, 100.0, 0.1, end=True, via_str=True))[-1] == 100.0

assert list(frange(2, 3, '1/6', end=True))[-1] == 3.0
assert list(frange(0, 100, '1/3', end=True))[-1] == 100.0

Code available on GitHub

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 generator with 41 values, not the 40 one might expect from 10/0.25.

Thus, depending on its use, an frange() function 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. In other words, it's easy to see how such a function would appear to conflate two very different use cases – the naming implies the indexing use case; the behavior implies a mathematical one.

The Mathematical Use Case

With that said, as discussed in other posts, numpy.linspace() performs the generation from 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.

A solution without numpy etc dependencies was provided by kichik but due to the floating point arithmetics, it often behaves unexpectedly. As noted by me and blubberdiblub, additional elements easily sneak into the result. For example naive_frange(0.0, 1.0, 0.1) would yield 0.999... as its last value and thus yield 11 values in total.

A bit more robust version is provided here:

def frange(x, y, jump=1.0):
    '''Range for floats.'''
    i = 0.0
    x = float(x)  # Prevent yielding integers.
    x0 = x
    epsilon = jump / 2.0
    yield x  # yield always first value
    while x + epsilon < y:
        i += 1.0
        x = x0 + i * jump
        if x < y:
          yield x

Because the multiplication, the rounding errors do not accumulate. The use of epsilon takes care of possible rounding error of the multiplication, even though issues of course might rise in the very small and very large ends. Now, as expected:

> a = list(frange(0.0, 1.0, 0.1))
> a[-1]
0.9
> len(a)
10

And with somewhat larger numbers:

> b = list(frange(0.0, 1000000.0, 0.1))
> b[-1]
999999.9
> len(b)
10000000

The code is also available as a GitHub Gist.

This can be done with numpy.arange(start, stop, stepsize)

import numpy as np

np.arange(0.5,5,1.5)
>> [0.5, 2.0, 3.5, 5.0]

# OBS you will sometimes see stuff like this happening, 
# so you need to decide whether that's not an issue for you, or how you are going to catch it.
>> [0.50000001, 2.0, 3.5, 5.0]

Note 1: From the discussion in the comment section here, "never use numpy.arange() (the numpy documentation itself recommends against it). Use numpy.linspace as recommended by wim, or one of the other suggestions in this answer"

Note 2: I have read the discussion in a few comments here, but after coming back to this question for the third time now, I feel this information should be placed in a more readable position.

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].