String Problem, What is it I don't understand?

[Manuel M. Garcia]

On Thu, 16 Jan 2003 18:58:29 GMT, Bubba <bub at joos.us> wrote:
(edit)
>I would expect to get the month day and year from the following, but
>day and year are null
>xxx = "01/17/03"
>month = xxx[0:2]
>print "month=",month
>day = xxx[3:2]
>print "day=",day
>year = xxx[6:2]
>print "year=",year

(Please use Fixed Pitch Font)

+---------------------------------------------------+
| Python indexes and slices for a six-element list. |
| Indexes enumerate the elements                    |
| Slices enumerate the spaces between the elements. |
|                                                   |
| Index from rear:    -6  -5  -4  -3  -2  -1        |
| Index from front:    0   1   2   3   4   5        |
|                    +---+---+---+---+---+---+      |
|                    | a | b | c | d | e | f |      |
|                    +---+---+---+---+---+---+      |
| Slice from front:  :   1   2   3   4   5   :      |
| Slice from rear:   :  -5  -4  -3  -2  -1   :      |
|                                                   |
|   a=[0,1,2,3,4,5]            a[1:]==[1,2,3,4,5]   |
|   len(a)==6                  a[:5]==[0,1,2,3,4]   |
|   a[0]==0                    a[:-2]==[0,1,2,3]    |
|   a[5]==5                    a[1:2]==[1]          |
|   a[-1]==5                   a[1:-1]==[1,2,3,4]   |
|   a[-2]==4                                        |
|                                                   |
|   b=a[:]                                          |
|   b==[0,1,2,3,4,5] (shallow copy of a)            |
+---------------------------------------------------+

Manuel