Slice

slice returns a subset of a string or list. This is equivalent to using the square-brackets slice operator seq[from:to], but with ordinary function syntax.

Arguments

Parameter Name	Type	Meaning
seq	string or list	sequence to get a subsequence of
from	number, default	0-based index to the first element to return (if negative, counts from the end)
to	number, optional	0-based index of first element to *not* include in the result (if negative, count from the end; if omitted, return the rest of the sequence)

Usage Notes

The from and to indexes are automatically limited to the range of the sequence; they never cause an Index Error. This provides for a useful idiom: to get element i of a sequence, or an empty value if sequence is too short to have such an element, use seq[i:i+1]. This differs from seq[i] in that the latter will result in an Index Error if i is out of range.

Example

slice("Hello", -2)              // returns "lo"
"Hello"[-2:]                    // equivalent to the above

slice("x", -2)                  // returns "x"
"x"[-2:]                        // equivalent to the above

slice([10,20,30,40,50], 1, 3)   // returns [20, 30]
[10,20,30,40,50][1:3]           // equivalent to the above