Creating a range of dates in Python

Marginally better...

base = datetime.datetime.today()
date_list = [base - datetime.timedelta(days=x) for x in range(numdays)]

Pandas is great for time series in general, and has direct support for date ranges.

For example pd.date_range():

import pandas as pd
from datetime import datetime

datelist = pd.date_range(datetime.today(), periods=100).tolist()

It also has lots of options to make life easier. For example if you only wanted weekdays, you would just swap in bdate_range.

See date range documentation

In addition it fully supports pytz timezones and can smoothly span spring/autumn DST shifts.

EDIT by OP:

If you need actual python datetimes, as opposed to Pandas timestamps:

import pandas as pd
from datetime import datetime

pd.date_range(end = datetime.today(), periods = 100).to_pydatetime().tolist()

#OR

pd.date_range(start="2018-09-09",end="2020-02-02")

This uses the "end" parameter to match the original question, but if you want descending dates:

pd.date_range(datetime.today(), periods=100).to_pydatetime().tolist()

You can write a generator function that returns date objects starting from today:

import datetime

def date_generator():
  from_date = datetime.datetime.today()
  while True:
    yield from_date
    from_date = from_date - datetime.timedelta(days=1)

This generator returns dates starting from today and going backwards one day at a time. Here is how to take the first 3 dates:

>>> import itertools
>>> dates = itertools.islice(date_generator(), 3)
>>> list(dates)
[datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 14, 19, 12, 21, 703890), datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 13, 19, 12, 21, 703890), datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 12, 19, 12, 21, 703890)]

The advantage of this approach over a loop or list comprehension is that you can go back as many times as you want.

Edit

A more compact version using a generator expression instead of a function:

date_generator = (datetime.datetime.today() - datetime.timedelta(days=i) for i in itertools.count())

Usage:

>>> dates = itertools.islice(date_generator, 3)
>>> list(dates)
[datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 15, 1, 32, 37, 286765), datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 14, 1, 32, 37, 286836), datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 13, 1, 32, 37, 286859)]

If using an external dependency is OK, check https://pypi.org/project/python-dateutil and its rrule module: https://dateutil.readthedocs.io/en/stable/rrule.html.

from dateutil import rrule
from datetime import datetime

list(rrule.rrule(rrule.DAILY,count=100,dtstart=datetime.now()))