In Scala, how to get a slice of a list from nth element to the end of the list without knowing the length?

Question

I'm looking for an elegant way to get a slice of a list from element n onwards without having to specify the length of the list. Lets say we have a multiline string which I split into lines and then want to get a list of all lines from line 3 onwards:

string.split("\n").slice(3,X)       // But I don't know what X is... 

What I'm really interested in here is whether there's a way to get hold of a reference of the list returned by the split call so that its length can be substituted into X at the time of the slice call, kind of like a fancy _ (in which case it would read as slice(3,_.length)) ? In python one doesn't need to specify the last element of the slice.

Of course I could solve this by using a temp variable after the split, or creating a helper function with a nice syntax, but I'm just curious.

Answer 1

Just drop first n elements you don't need:

List(1,2,3,4).drop(2) res0: List[Int] = List(3, 4) 

or in your case:

string.split("\n").drop(2) 

There is also paired method .take(n) that do the opposite thing, you can think of it as .slice(0,n).

In case you need both parts, use .splitAt:

val (left, right) = List(1,2,3,4).splitAt(2) left: List[Int] = List(1, 2) right: List[Int] = List(3, 4) 

Answer 2

The right answer is takeRight(n):

"communism is sharing => resource saver".takeRight(3)                                               //> res0: String = ver