Python Program to Slice Lists – 2024

Hey guys, in this blog we will see a Python Program to Slice Lists.

The format for list slicing is [start:stop:step].

  • start is the index of the list where slicing starts.
  • stop is the index of the list where the slicing ends.
  • step allows you to select the nth item within the range start to stop.

Get all the Items

# Python Program to Slice Lists

my_list = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

print(my_list[:])

Output

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

When we want to access all the items of the list we use [:] which means all.

Get all the Items After a Specific Position

# Python Program to Slice Lists

my_list = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

print(my_list[2:])

Output

[3, 4, 5]
  • When we want to access all the items of the list after a specific position we use [2:] which means all the elements starting from position 2 to end.
  • Indexing will be 0 indexed which means position 2 in 0 indexed will actually be position 3 if we start counting from 1.
  • Notice position 2 is inclusive.

Get all the Items Before a Specific Position

# Python Program to Slice Lists

my_list = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

print(my_list[:2])

Output

[1, 2]
  • When we want to access all the items on the list before a specific position we use [:2] which means all the elements start from starting to this position.
  • Notice position 2 is exclusive.

Get all the Items from One Position to Another Position

# Python Program to Slice Lists

my_list = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

print(my_list[2:4])

Output

[3, 4]
  • When we want to access all the list items in a specific range we use [2:4] which means all the elements starting from position 2 to 4.
  • Notice that 2 is inclusive and 4 is exclusive.

Get the Items at Specified Intervals

# Python Program to Slice Lists

my_list = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

print(my_list[::2])

Output

[1, 3, 5]
  • When we want to change the step size while accessing items of a list we use [::2] which means all the elements from start to end but the step size is 2.
  • After 1 it should ideally print 2 but as our step size is 2 it will print 3.

Start indexing from the last item

If you want the indexing to start from the last item, you can use the negative sign -.

# Python Program to Slice Lists

my_list = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

print(my_list[::-2])

Output

[5, 3, 1]
  • Similar to above but here step size is -2 which means starting from the end and taking 2 steps back every time.

Slicing items from one position to another

If you want the items from one position to another, you can mention them from start to stop.

# Python Program to Slice Lists

my_list = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

print(my_list[1:4:2])

Output

[2, 4]

Check out our other python programming examples

Abhishek Sharma
Abhishek Sharma

Started my Data Science journey in my 2nd year of college and since then continuously into it because of the magical powers of ML and continuously doing projects in almost every domain of AI like ML, DL, CV, NLP.

Articles: 517

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