Question

I do not know much about python, but I am surprised the following code works:

import sys
prev =  [sys.maxint]*(5)
j = 0
print prev[j]
print prev[j-1]

In general I thought second print statement should give me an error. Why does this work?

I need to convert some python code into C++, and in C++ this will not work.

Answer 1

mylist[-1] returns the last item of mylist, mylist[-2] the second-to-last item etc.

This is by design. Read the tutorial.