• range
• list
• getsizeof

Using the list function we can tell the range object to generate the whole list immediately. Either using the variable that holds the range object, or wrapping the range() call in a list() call.

You might recall at the beginning of the course we saw the sys.getsizeof() function that returns the size of a Python object in the memory. If you don't recall, no problem, we'll see it used now. As you can see the size of the range object is only 48 bytes while the size of the 3-element list is already 112 bytes. It seems the range object is better than even such a short lists. On the next page we'll see a more detailed analyzis.

import sys

rng = range(3, 9, 2)
numbers = list(rng)
print(rng)        # range(3, 9, 2)
print(numbers)    # [3, 5, 7]

others = list(range(2, 11, 3))
print(others)   # [2, 5, 8]

print(sys.getsizeof(rng))     # 48
print(sys.getsizeof(numbers)) # 112