[coldtea]

"in the usual Python vein of introducing an abstraction to save 2-3 lines"

[ledauphin]

this is what abstractions are for. they can be done poorly or well, but there's a reason iterators are favored in most use cases over

    for (i = 0, i < n; i++) { a[i] }

- they're simpler to reason about because they restrict the conceptual operational space.