If I want to iterate over part of the list, the normal Python idiom is to do something like this:
alist = range(50) # first item is special x = alist[0] # iterate over the rest of the list for item in alist[1:] x = item The important thing to notice is that alist[1:] makes a copy. What if the list has millions of items and duplicating it is expensive? What do people do in that case? Are there better or more Pythonic alternatives to this obvious C-like idiom? for i in range(1, len(alist)): x = alist[i] -- Steven D'Aprano -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list