The following code ran in Google Colab...

=====================================

import sys

print (sys.version)

string = 'WORD=BIRD\nBIRD\nBIRD'

print(string.split())

print('========')

print(string.split('=')[0][0:3])
print(string.split('=')[1][0:3])

=================================

produces this...

=================================

3.6.9 (default, Oct  8 2020, 12:12:24) 
[GCC 8.4.0]
['WORD=BIRD', 'BIRD', 'BIRD']
========
WOR
BIR

=================================

Shouldn't index [0:3] give 4 chars? I looked in the docs and I could not find anything explaining this behavior.

=================================

Thanks.

Hi Aleksandr,

In future, when posting what you think might be a bug, please try to cut the code down to the bare minimum needed. In this case, it doesn't matter at all that the strings you are processing come from splitting a larger string. split() has done its job, correctly, giving you a list of  substrings

    ['WORD', 'BIRD\nBIRD\nBIRD']

You then extract each item, and only then take the slice from it. So you can simplify the problem:

    string = 'WORD'
    print(string[0:3])

You ask:

"Shouldn't index [0:3] give 4 chars?"

No. It gives *three* characters. The end index is not included in the slice. Slice indexes occur *between* the characters:

    |W|O|R|D|
    0.1.2.3.4

so a slice from 0 to 3 includes only three characters, not four.

Slicing is described here:

https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/introduction.html