Python (2.x) list / sublist selection -1 weirdness
Solution 1
In list[first:last]
, last
is not included.
The 10th element is ls[9]
, in ls[0:10]
there isn't ls[10]
.
Solution 2
If you want to get a sub list including the last element, you leave blank after colon:
>>> ll=range(10)
>>> ll
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> ll[5:]
[5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> ll[:]
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
Solution 3
I get consistent behaviour for both instances:
>>> ls[0:10]
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> ls[10:-1]
[10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18]
Note, though, that tenth element of the list is at index 9, since the list is 0-indexed. That might be where your hang-up is.
In other words, [0:10]
doesn't go from index 0-10, it effectively goes from 0 to the tenth element (which gets you indexes 0-9, since the 10 is not inclusive at the end of the slice).
Solution 4
when slicing an array;
ls[y:x]
takes the slice from element y upto and but not including x. when you use the negative indexing it is equivalent to using
ls[y:-1] == ls[y:len(ls)-1]
so it so the slice would be upto the last element, but it wouldn't include it (as per the slice)
Solution 5
It seems pretty consistent to me; positive indices are also non-inclusive. I think you're doing it wrong. Remembering that range() is also non-inclusive, and that Python arrays are 0-indexed, here's a sample python session to illustrate:
>>> d = range(10)
>>> d
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> d[9]
9
>>> d[-1]
9
>>> d[0:9]
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]
>>> d[0:-1]
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]
>>> len(d)
10
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Matti Lyra
I am a PhD student at the University of Sussex studying Computational Linguistics. My research topic is "Topical Subcategory Structure in Text Classification"
Updated on November 23, 2021Comments
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Matti Lyra over 2 years
So I've been playing around with python and noticed something that seems a bit odd. The semantics of
-1
in selecting from a list don't seem to be consistent.So I have a list of numbers
ls = range(1000)
The last element of the list if of course
ls[-1]
but if I take a sublist of that so that I get everything from say the midpoint to the end I would dols[500:-1]
but this does not give me a list containing the last element in the list, but instead a list containing everything UP TO the last element. However if I do
ls[0:10]
I get a list containing also the tenth element (so the selector ought to be inclusive), why then does it not work for
-1
.I can of course do
ls[500:]
orls[500:len(ls)]
(which would be silly). I was just wondering what the deal with -1 was, I realise that I don't need it there.-
Christopher Hunter over 2 yearsNote that this is an older question and some behavior is specific to python2. In python3 the equivalent would be
ls = list(range(1000))
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