extract elements of n char from a list

[Tim Peters]

[Fernando Perez, on the mysteries of time.clock() and Tim's use of
 "user" time in a Cookbook chapter intro]
> Ahh, the beauty of vague standards :)

At least POSIX doesn't contradict the C std in this area, which latter says
just as little about it.

> Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed your description and it was as I
> said a minor point, slightly worthy of mention.  It wasn't really
> misleading at all, it's  just that I was sensitive to the point
> because of having spent the afternoon yesterday writing 4 different
> clock functions as an extension module to distinguish between system
> and user time.

That's very gracious of you, but if I could, I'd reword it.  Your point was
well taken!  "User time" will have a particular meaning to many readers that
I didn't intend in that sense -- I should have stuck with a vague "process
time".

> The book looks very nice, btw. Good job,

I just got the Cookbook yesterday, and it *does* look good!  I believe we
can primarily thank Alex Martelli for that -- from what I saw, he put an
enormous amount of work into organizing, cleaning and improving the content.
In fact, I wouldn't be suprised to learn that he wrote all the chapter
intros too <wink>.