Since well before Rust 1.0, you’ve been able to create exclusive ranges with .. like this:

for i in 1..3 {
    println!("i: {}", i);
}

This will print i: 1 and then i: 2. Today, you can now create an inclusive range, like this:

#![allow(unused_variables)]
fn main() {
for i in 1..=3 {
    println!("i: {}", i);
}
}

This will print i: 1 and then i: 2 like before, but also i: 3; the three is included in the range. Inclusive ranges are especially useful if you want to iterate over every possible value in a range. For example, this is a surprising Rust program:

fn takes_u8(x: u8) {
    // ...
}

fn main() {
    for i in 0..256 {
        println!("i: {}", i);
        takes_u8(i);
    }
}

What does this program do? The answer: it fails to compile. The error we get when compiling has a hint:

error: literal out of range for u8
 --> src/main.rs:6:17
  |
6 |     for i in 0..256 {
  |                 ^^^
  |
  = note: #[deny(overflowing_literals)] on by default

That’s right, since i is a u8, this overflows, and the compiler produces an error.

We can do this with inclusive ranges, however:

fn takes_u8(x: u8) {
    // ...
}

fn main() {
    for i in 0..=255 {
        println!("i: {}", i);
        takes_u8(i);
    }
}

This will produce those 256 lines of output you might have been expecting.