Efficiently iterating over part of a list

[James Stroud]

James Stroud wrote:
> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> If I want to iterate over part of the list, the normal Python idiom is to
>> do something like this:
>>
>> alist = range(50)
>> # first item is special
>> x = alist[0]
>> # iterate over the rest of the list
>> for item in alist[1:]
>>     x = item
>>
>> The important thing to notice is that alist[1:] makes a copy. What if the
>> list has millions of items and duplicating it is expensive? What do 
>> people
>> do in that case?
>>
>> Are there better or more Pythonic alternatives to this obvious C-like
>> idiom?
>>
>> for i in range(1, len(alist)):
>>     x = alist[i]
>>
>>
> 
> I think this is a job for iterators:
> 
> listiter = iter(alist)
> 
> first_item_is_special = listiter.next()
> 
> for not_special_item in listiter:
>   do_stuff_with(not_special_item)
> 
> 
> Other solutions might involve enumerators:
> 
> special = [i for i in xrange(50) if not i%13]
> 
> for i,item in alist:
>   if i in special:
>     do_something_special_with(item)
>   else:
>     do_other_stuff_with(item)
> 
> James
> 
> 
> James

I mean

for i,item in enumerate(alist):