What does range function return?

Question

If i use range function for creating a list, then it works properly. But what ŵould be if i would try to do it in the following way:
var = range(5)
?
seems like it doesnt work in such way because additionaly i have to create a list. So it would be:
var = list(range(5))

correct?
Then why does it work for 'for' cycle:
for i in range(5):
print(i)

final output is:
0
1
2
3
4

It seems that in case of 'for' it automatically creates a list of values. Is it so or not? and if no, then how does it work?

Answer 1

range returns a range object

>>>x=range(1,4)
if you cast it to a a list:
>>>list(x)
[1, 2, 3]
or to a tuple:
>>>tuple(x)
(1, 2, 3)

the range object which returned contains an iterator according to the third paramater (which i did not supplied so by default=1)
if i would have supplied an increment value:
y=range(1,10,3)
>>>tuple(y)
(1, 4, 7)

Answer 2

range(begin, end, step) - returns a list