How to get the first X Elements of a List in Python

When you are working with lists in Python, a common operation is to get the first X elements of the list.

In this post, we're going to learn the best way to do this.

Get the first X elements of a list

To begin, let's start with our example list:

PYTHON
numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

To get the first elements of a list, we can use the [0:X] slicing syntax.

What this means is that whatever number you put in the brackets as X, it will return the first X elements of the list.

Let's try it out using the value of 3 in the brackets:

PYTHON
numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
first = numbers[0:3]

print(first)

BASH
[1, 2, 3]

This syntax works because we are telling the Python compiler to first start with the element at the 0 index (the first element in the list), and then to stop slicing at the 3 index (the fourth element in the list).

Simply pass in the number of elements you want to return where X is and you'll get the first X elements of the list.

Conclusion

In this post, we learned about the best way to get the first X elements of a list.

Simply make use of the built-in [0:X] slicing syntax to get what you need.

Thanks for reading and happy coding!

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