For loop - like Python range function

Use Apache Commons Lang:

new IntRange(0, 3).toArray();

I wouldn't normally advocate introducing external libraries for something so simple, but Apache Commons are so widely used that you probably already have it in your project!

Edit: I know its not necessarily as simple or fast as a for loop, but its a nice bit of syntactic sugar that makes the intent clear.

Edit: See @zengr's answer using IntStream in Java 8 .

Java 8 (2014) has added IntStream (similar to apache commons IntRange), so you don't need external lib now.

import java.util.stream.IntStream; 

IntStream.range(0, 3).forEachOrdered(n -> {
    System.out.println(n);
});

forEach can be used in place of forEachOrdered too if order is not important.

IntStream.range(0, 3).parallel() can be used for loops to run in parallel

Um... for (int i = 0; i < k; i++)? You don't have to write enhanced for loops all day, you know, although they are cool...

And just for the sake of argument:

for (int i : range(k)) char count: 22

for (int i = 0; i < k; i++) char count: 27

Discounting the implementation of range, it is pseudo even.

Without an external library, you can do the following. It will consume significantly less memory for big ranges than the current accepted answer, as there is no array created.

Have a class like this:

class Range implements Iterable<Integer> {

    private int limit;

    public Range(int limit) {
        this.limit = limit;
    }

    @Override
    public Iterator<Integer> iterator() {
        final int max = limit;
        return new Iterator<Integer>() {

            private int current = 0;

            @Override
            public boolean hasNext() {
                return current < max;
            }

            @Override
            public Integer next() {
                if (hasNext()) {
                    return current++;   
                } else {
                    throw new NoSuchElementException("Range reached the end");
                }
            }

            @Override
            public void remove() {
                throw new UnsupportedOperationException("Can't remove values from a Range");
            }
        };
    }
}

and you can simply use it like this:

    for (int i : new Range(5)) {
        System.out.println(i);
    }

you can even reuse it:

    Range range5 = new Range(5);

    for (int i : range5) {
        System.out.println(i);
    }
    for (int i : range5) {
        System.out.println(i);
    }

---

As Henry Keiter pointed out in the comment below, we could add following method to the Range class (or anywhere else):

public static Range range(int max) {
    return new Range(max);
}

and then, in the other classes we can

import static package.name.Range.range;

and simply call

for (int i : range(5)) {
    System.out.println(i);
}