itertools.islice()

itertools.islice(iterable, stop) itertools.islice(iterable, start, stop[, step])

Make an iterator that returns selected elements from the iterable. If start is non-zero, then elements from the iterable are skipped until start is reached. Afterward, elements are returned consecutively unless step is set higher than one which results in items being skipped. If stop is None, then iteration continues until the iterator is exhausted, if at all; otherwise, it stops at the specified position. Unlike regular slicing, islice() does not support negative values for start, stop, or step. Can be used to extract related fields from data where the internal structure has been flattened (for example, a multi-line report may list a name field on every third line). Roughly equivalent to:

def islice(iterable, *args):
    # islice('ABCDEFG', 2) --> A B
    # islice('ABCDEFG', 2, 4) --> C D
    # islice('ABCDEFG', 2, None) --> C D E F G
    # islice('ABCDEFG', 0, None, 2) --> A C E G
    s = slice(*args)
    it = iter(range(s.start or 0, s.stop or sys.maxsize, s.step or 1))
    try:
        nexti = next(it)
    except StopIteration:
        return
    for i, element in enumerate(iterable):
        if i == nexti:
            yield element
            nexti = next(it)

If start is None, then iteration starts at zero. If step is None, then the step defaults to one.