getitem and slices

In Python, you can override square brackets operator ([]) by defining __getitem__ magic method. The example is Cycle object that virtually contains an infinite number of repeated elements:

class Cycle:
    def __init__(self, lst):
        self._lst = lst

    def __getitem__(self, index):
        return self._lst[index % len(self._lst)]

print(Cycle(['a', 'b', 'c'])[100])  # prints 'b'

The unusual thing here is [] operator supports a unique syntax. It can be used not only like this — [2], but also like this — [2:10], or [2:10:2], or [2::2], or even [:]. The semantic is [start:stop:step] but you can use it any way you want for your custom objects.

But what __getitem__ gets as an index parameter if you call it using that syntax? The slice objects exist precisely for this case.

In : class Inspector:
...:     def __getitem__(self, index):
...:         print(index)
...:
In : Inspector()[1]
1
In : Inspector()[1:2]
slice(1, 2, None)
In : Inspector()[1:2:3]
slice(1, 2, 3)
In : Inspector()[:]
slice(None, None, None)

You can even combine tuple and slice syntaxes:

In : Inspector()[:, 0, :]
(slice(None, None, None), 0, slice(None, None, None))

slice is not doing anything for you except simply storing start, stop and step attributes.

In : s = slice(1, 2, 3)
In : s.start
Out: 1
In : s.stop
Out: 2
In : s.step
Out: 3