How do we refer to the elements of a list? By index number, starting at zero and stopping one short of the number of elements in the list. So a 20 element list has element numbers 0 to 19.

How can we refer to the last element, then? We could write an expression based on the length of the list - so
mylist[len(mylist)-1] in Python
$mylist[@mylist-1] or $mylist[$#mylist] in Perl.
That's going to get very messy if you want to do a lot of work on the end elements of a list, so (in both Perl and Python), you can refer to members of a list by a negative position number, meaning "number of positions from the end".

So:
mylist[-1] - last element of a list in Python
$mylist[-2] - next to last (penultimate) element of a list in Perl
(written 2007-08-16 10:45:30)

 P208 - Perl - Lists
  [2484] Finding text and what surrounds it - contextual grep - (2009-10-30)
  [2295] The dog is not in trouble - (2009-07-17)
  [2226] Revision / Summary of lists - Perl - (2009-06-10)
  [2067] Perl - lists do so much more than arrays - (2009-03-05)
  [1918] Perl Socket Programming Examples - (2008-12-02)
  [1917] Out of memory during array extend - Perl - (2008-12-02)
  [1828] Perl - map to process every member of a list (array) - (2008-10-09)
  [1703] Perl ... adding to a list - end, middle, start - (2008-07-09)
  [1316] Filtering and altering Perl lists with grep and map - (2007-08-23)
  [968] Perl - a list or a hash? - (2006-12-06)
  [928] C++ and Perl - why did they do it THAT way? - (2006-11-16)
  [773] Breaking bread - (2006-06-22)
  [762] Huge data files - what happened earlier? - (2006-06-15)
  [622] Queues and barrel rolls in Perl - (2006-02-24)
  [560] The fencepost problem - (2006-01-10)
  [463] Splitting the difference - (2005-10-13)
  [355] Context in Perl - (2005-06-22)
  [240] Conventional restraints removed - (2005-03-09)
  [230] Course sizes - beware of marketing statistics - (2005-02-27)
  [140] Comparison Chart for Perl programmers - list functions - (2004-12-04)
  [28] Perl for breakfast - (2004-08-25)

Y111 - Python - More on Collections and Sequences
  [1873] List Comprehensions in Python - (2008-11-06)
  [1869] Anonymous functions (lambdas) and map in Python - (2008-11-04)
  [1310] Callbacks - a more complex code sandwich - (2007-08-19)
  [899] Python - extend v append on a list - (2006-10-20)
  [633] Copying a reference, or cloning - (2006-03-05)
  [386] What is a callback? - (2005-07-22)
  [61] Python is a fabulous language - (2004-09-24)

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