len() of ipaddress.ip_network()

[Skaperen]

no, it is not necessary to create a sequence to determine len(). the object can implement the .__len__() method to achieve that. i could create a subclass of these various network objects and include that method. but it is easy enough to determine the length from the network prefix length that i would not bother to make such subclasses for this purpose.

the new range class can do this, up to a point. apparently, it is implemented in C, in which numbers 2**64 and up require more code (BTDT in C).

Output:
>>> len(range(6,2**60,3))
384307168202282324
>>> len(range(6,2**66,3))
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
OverflowError: Python int too large to convert to C ssize_t

do you think it created a 341 petabyte sequence to determine the length in the first one??