[mousa]

What abstraction? Comparisons are ubiquitous, easy to read, and a one-liner as well. If the range were to change it could affect performance. I've never seen anything written like the original loop, it's not like it's a Python idiom or anything. I'd say it's the wrong way to do things.

[mentos]

The abstraction is in removing the cognitive overhead needed to understand this. The original programmer can now allocate the time saved to higher level concerns. That is what C did for assembly and what Python is doing for C. Is that not the theme of abstraction?

[blktiger]

In this case I actually think the cognitive overhead is larger for the in range(5) call. You have to know how that will behave, is it 1 <= x < 5 or 1 <= x <= 5? The comparisons are more explicit and they are quite easy to read in this case.