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Bennett Lappen
12,035 PointsMoving Backward Through List (slicing)
I'm confused at 2:51
The video states that we can't enter [-2:-5] when moving through the list because the list goes from left to right. However, we can enter [-2: -5: -1]. I don't understand .
Example: list1 = list(range(21)) list1 RETURNS [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20]
list1 [-2 : -5] RETURNS nothing list1[-2 : -5 : -1] RETURNS [19, 18, 17]
I don't understand why [-2 : -5] does not work, while [-2 : -5: -1] does work. What's going on? The video explanation doesn't quite fill in the details for me.
Many thanks
1 Answer
Steven Parker
229,732 PointsA negative value in a slice start or end argument means "from the end". So if you try to slice with [-2:-5], you are asking for everything starting 2 from the end, and going forwards to 5 from the end. Since the specified start position is already past the endl position, the result is empty.
On the other hand, if you specify [-2:-5:-1], you are asking for everything starting 2 from the end, and going backwards to 5 from the end. In that direction the start and end identify three values. If you wanted those same values in normal order you could ask for [-4:-1].
Does it make sense now?