Skip first entry in for loop in python?

To skip the first element in Python you can simply write

for car in cars[1:]:
    # Do What Ever you want

or to skip the last elem

for car in cars[:-1]:
    # Do What Ever you want

You can use this concept for any sequence (not for any iterable though).

Here is a more general generator function that skips any number of items from the beginning and end of an iterable:

def skip(iterable, at_start=0, at_end=0):
    it = iter(iterable)
    for x in itertools.islice(it, at_start):
        pass
    queue = collections.deque(itertools.islice(it, at_end))
    for x in it:
        queue.append(x)
        yield queue.popleft()

Example usage:

>>> list(skip(range(10), at_start=2, at_end=2))
[2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]

The other answers only work for a sequence.

For any iterable, to skip the first item:

itercars = iter(cars)
next(itercars)
for car in itercars:
    # do work

If you want to skip the last, you could do:

itercars = iter(cars)
# add 'next(itercars)' here if you also want to skip the first
prev = next(itercars)
for car in itercars:
    # do work on 'prev' not 'car'
    # at end of loop:
    prev = car
# now you can do whatever you want to do to the last one on 'prev'

The best way to skip the first item(s) is:

from itertools import islice
for car in islice(cars, 1, None):
    pass
    # do something

islice in this case is invoked with a start-point of 1, and an end point of None, signifying the end of the iterable.

To be able to skip items from the end of an iterable, you need to know its length (always possible for a list, but not necessarily for everything you can iterate on). for example, islice(cars, 1, len(cars)-1) will skip the first and last items in cars.