Understanding Python's slice notation
I need a good explanation (references are a plus) on Python's slice notation.
To me, this notation needs a bit of picking up.
It looks extremely powerful, but I haven't quite got my head around it.
It's pretty simple really:
a[start:end] # items start through end-1
a[start:] # items start through the rest of the array
a[:end] # items from the beginning through end-1
a[:] # a copy of the whole array
There is also the step value, which can be used with any of the above:
a[start:end:step] # start through not past end, by step
The key point to remember is that the :end value represents the first value that is not in the selected slice. So, the difference beween end and start is the number of elements selected (if step is 1, the default).
The other feature is that start or end may be a negative number, which means it counts from the end of the array instead of the beginning. So:
a[-1] # last item in the array
a[-2:] # last two items in the array
a[:-2] # everything except the last two items
Similarly, step may be a negative number:
a[::-1] # all items in the array, reversed
a[1::-1] # the first two items, reversed
a[:-3:-1] # the last two items, reversed
a[-3::-1] # everything except the last two items, reversed
Python is kind to the programmer if there are fewer items than you ask for. For example, if you ask for a[:-2] and a only contains one element, you get an empty list instead of an error. Sometimes you would prefer the error, so you have to be aware that this may happen.
The Python tutorial talks about it (scroll down a bit until you get to the part about slicing).
The ASCII art diagram is helpful too for remembering how slices work:
+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| P | y | t | h | o | n |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
-6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1
One way to remember how slices work is to think of the indices as pointing between characters, with the left edge of the first character numbered 0. Then the right edge of the last character of a string of n characters has index n.
Enumerating the possibilities allowed by the grammar:
>>> seq[:] # [seq[0], seq[1], ..., seq[-1] ]
>>> seq[low:] # [seq[low], seq[low+1], ..., seq[-1] ]
>>> seq[:high] # [seq[0], seq[1], ..., seq[high-1]]
>>> seq[low:high] # [seq[low], seq[low+1], ..., seq[high-1]]
>>> seq[::stride] # [seq[0], seq[stride], ..., seq[-1] ]
>>> seq[low::stride] # [seq[low], seq[low+stride], ..., seq[-1] ]
>>> seq[:high:stride] # [seq[0], seq[stride], ..., seq[high-1]]
>>> seq[low:high:stride] # [seq[low], seq[low+stride], ..., seq[high-1]]
Of course, if (high-low)%stride != 0 , then the end point will be a little lower than high-1 .
If stride is negative, the ordering is changed a bit since we're counting down:
>>> seq[::-stride] # [seq[-1], seq[-1-stride], ..., seq[0] ]
>>> seq[high::-stride] # [seq[high], seq[high-stride], ..., seq[0] ]
>>> seq[:low:-stride] # [seq[-1], seq[-1-stride], ..., seq[low+1]]
>>> seq[high:low:-stride] # [seq[high], seq[high-stride], ..., seq[low+1]]
Extended slicing (with commas and ellipses) are mostly used only by special data structures (like Numpy); the basic sequences don't support them.
>>> class slicee:
... def __getitem__(self, item):
... return `item`
...
>>> slicee()[0, 1:2, ::5, ...]
'(0, slice(1, 2, None), slice(None, None, 5), Ellipsis)'
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