Unexpected "list index out of range" error when extracting values of last column in 2D lis-CodePudding

I have a 20x20 2D nested list (see end of post) composed of ones and zeros.

My aim is to store all the elements of the last column (except for the first and last rows) into a variable.

I initially thought the following code would work:

variable = nestedList[1:19][19]

However this throws me an "index out of range" error.

Why is this error coming up and how can I solve this problem?

The 2D list:

[[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0],
[0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1],
[1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1],
[0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0],
[1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0],
[1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1],
[1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1],
[1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0],
[1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1],
[0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1],
[1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1],
[1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1],
[0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]]

CodePudding user response：

[19] is not indexing a column, it's indexing row number 19 in the list of rows. But you've sliced the rows so there are only 18 rows, so you get an error trying to access [19].

Use a list comprehension to get an element of each row:

[row[-1] for row in nestedList[1:-1]]

Notice that you can use negative indexes to count from the end.

CodePudding user response：

While Barmar gives the technically correct answer, this solution has a clumsy taste. You can almost stick to your more intuitive syntax if you use numpy:

import numpy as np

mat = np.array(nested_list)
variable = mat[1:19,19]