Pythonic loops--how to get multiple elements while iterating a list

Question

I want to iterate over my list and do something with multiple elements, not just one element. I want to take the first element and some elements after it (they could be sequential or maybe the 3rd element from the one returned).

l = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']
  for items in l:
    print items[:3]

The output should be:

['a', 'b', 'c'], ['b', 'c', 'd'], ['c', 'd', 'e']

There are a lot of good answers, what if want to skip elements? Say, get an element, skip the next element, and get the 3rd element?

Output:

('a', 'c'), ('b','d'), ('c', 'e')

I guess enumerate is the best way to handle this?

Iterating through lists so simple and elegant I hoped similar syntax would allow you to use it inside a for loop on the element itself and not use range or enumerate.

l = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']
  for items in l:
    print (items[0], items[2])

(Yes, I know this code would give different results if the original list was a list containing lists. [ [1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9] ] would return [1, 3], [4, 6], [7, 9])

Answer 1

l = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']
subarraysize = 3
for i in range(len(l)-subarraysize+1):
    print l[i:i+subarraysize]

Output:

['a', 'b', 'c']
['b', 'c', 'd']
['c', 'd', 'e']

Not very Pythonic I know, but in its favour it does actually work.