A better way for a Python ‘for’ loop

Using

for _ in itertools.repeat(None, count)
    do something

is the non-obvious way of getting the best of all worlds: tiny constant space requirement, and no new objects created per iteration. Under the covers, the C code for repeat uses a native C integer type (not a Python integer object!) to keep track of the count remaining.

For that reason, the count needs to fit in the platform C ssize_t type, which is generally at most 2**31 - 1 on a 32-bit box, and here on a 64-bit box:

>>> itertools.repeat(None, 2**63)
Traceback (most recent call last):
    ...
OverflowError: Python int too large to convert to C ssize_t

>>> itertools.repeat(None, 2**63-1)
repeat(None, 9223372036854775807)

Which is plenty big for my loops 😉