range over character in python

Question

Is there an way to range over characters? something like this.

for c in xrange( 'a', 'z' ):
    print c

I hope you guys can help.

Answer 1

This is a great use for a custom generator:

Python 2:

def char_range(c1, c2):     """Generates the characters from `c1` to `c2`, inclusive."""     for c in xrange(ord(c1), ord(c2)+1):         yield chr(c) 

then:

for c in char_range('a', 'z'):     print c 

---

Python 3:

def char_range(c1, c2):     """Generates the characters from `c1` to `c2`, inclusive."""     for c in range(ord(c1), ord(c2)+1):         yield chr(c) 

then:

for c in char_range('a', 'z'):     print(c) 

Answer 2

import string
for char in string.ascii_lowercase:
    print char

See string constants for the other possibilities, including uppercase, numbers, locale-dependent characters, all of which you can join together like string.ascii_uppercase + string.ascii_lowercase if you want all of the characters in multiple sets.