Enumerating the possibilities allowed by the grammar for the sequence x:
>>> x[:] # [x[0], x[1], ..., x[-1] ]
>>> x[low:] # [x[low], x[low+1], ..., x[-1] ]
>>> x[:high] # [x[0], x[1], ..., x[high-1]]
>>> x[low:high] # [x[low], x[low+1], ..., x[high-1]]
>>> x[::stride] # [x[0], x[stride], ..., x[-1] ]
>>> x[low::stride] # [x[low], x[low+stride], ..., x[-1] ]
>>> x[:high:stride] # [x[0], x[stride], ..., x[high-1]]
>>> x[low:high:stride] # [x[low], x[low+stride], ..., x[high-1]]
Of course, if (high-low)%stride != 0, then the end point will be a little lower than high-1.
If stride is negative, the ordering is changed a bit since we're counting down:
>>> x[::-stride] # [x[-1], x[-1-stride], ..., x[0] ]
>>> x[high::-stride] # [x[high], x[high-stride], ..., x[0] ]
>>> x[:low:-stride] # [x[-1], x[-1-stride], ..., x[low+1]]
>>> x[high:low:-stride] # [x[high], x[high-stride], ..., x[low+1]]
Extended slicing (with commas and ellipses) are mostly used only by special data structures (like NumPy); the basic sequences don't support them.
>>> class slicee:
... def __getitem__(self, item):
... return repr(item)
...
>>> slicee()[0, 1:2, ::5, ...]
'(0, slice(1, 2, None), slice(None, None, 5), Ellipsis)'
