Question

How would I get the first character from the first string in a list in Python?

It seems that I could use mylist[0][1:] but that does not give me the first character.

>>> mylist = []
>>> mylist.append("asdf")
>>> mylist.append("jkl;")
>>> mylist[0][1:]
'sdf'

Answer 1

You almost had it right. The simplest way is

mylist[0][0]   # get the first character from the first item in the list

but

mylist[0][:1]  # get up to the first character in the first item in the list

would also work.

You want to end after the first character (character zero), not start after the first character (character zero), which is what the code in your question means.