slice-ref 0.0.2

Python Slicing Reference

Python's builtin list type allows one to pass in slices to get, set or delete a range of elements.

>>> my_list = ['a', 'b','c']
>>> my_list[0:2]
['a', 'b']
>>> my_list[0:3:2]
['a', 'b']
>>> my_list[1:3] = [1, 2]
>>> my_list
['a', 1, 2]
>>> my_list[::-1] = ['z', 'y', 'x']
>>> my_list
['x', 'y', 'z']

The slice notation using colons is infact a slice builtin, where start:stop:step is equivalent to slice(start, stop, step). This looks an awful lot like the range(start, stop, step) builtin, but 1-to-1 translating slices to ranges is not always appropiate.

I have created this package as a reference implementation of list, specifically to educate on how it deals with slices. I use Hypothesis to test my custom class listy against Python's very own list, hopefully ensuring that all situations where slicing is involved is perfectly emulated.