Remind them that there is a reason the range function works this way. One helpful property of it is that the number of times the loop will run is equal to the second argument of range minus the first argument.

I think people get really hung up on this, but the fact is for loops in Python are very different than from C. In C, for loops are basically a wrapper around a while loop.

These two examples should help show the difference between how loops work in C versus python.

Copy# for(int x=1; x <= 10; x++)
x = 1
while x <= 10:
    print(x)
    x += 1


i = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]  # range(1, 11)
for x in i:
    print(i)

But honestly, the real problem here is that all loops and arrays are easier to understand and work with if they start at zero, not one. Please consider adjusting your examples to start at zero.

This way, if you want to loop 10 times, you use the number 10.

Copy   # for(int x=0; x < 10; x++)
x = 0
while x < 10:
    print(x)
    x += 1


i = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]  # range(10)
for x in i:
    print(i)

You should also know that in Python, iterating over integer indices is bad style, and also slower than the alternative. If you just want to look at each of the items in a list or dict, loop directly through the list or dict.

mylist = [1,2,3]
for item in mylist:
    print item

mydict  = {1:'one', 2:'two', 3:'three'}
for key in mydict:
    print key, mydict[key]

This is actually faster than using the above code with range(), and removes the extraneous i variable.

If you need to edit items of a list in-place, then you do need the index, but there's still a better way:

for i, item in enumerate(mylist):
    mylist[i] = item**2

Again, this is both faster and considered more readable. This one of the main shifts in thinking you need to make when coming from C++ to Python.