To the simple ways of this simple monk, the range operator (in a scalar context) is a “trick tool” that I tend to avoid, because I know that I can accomplish the same thing just as well with a little more typing (I’m a very good, fast typist...).   Furthermore, I know that I will still be able to understand my own code a few months from now.

As far as I have been told, the range-operator implementation was done this way, more-or-less to mimic the behavior of another Unix command-line tool.   But when a language feature demands that I “count the number of periods,” my polite response is, “no, I’d rather not, thank you.”

The anonymous writer on developertutorials.com put it well when (s)he said, “Personally, I’ll usually write out a much longer loop maintaining my own flip-flops than use this, just because I often get tricked by its nuances.   If your brain works better than mine, you might find these handy in quite a few situations.”

What I would do, given this situation, is to first very-carefully determine what this little block of code is doing, and then rewrite it in some other way.   But, I am but a simple monk...