#### 2.3.2 Selecting a range of indices ¶

You can refer to several consecutive array elements by an index range: `x(3:6)` means the four element subarray `[x(3), x(4), x(5), x(6)]`.

Occasionally, you also want to refer to a sparse subset of an array; you can add an increment to an index range by means of a second colon: `x(3:7:2)` means the three element subarray `[x(3), x(5), x(7)]`.

A negative increment reverses the order of the elements: `x(7:3:-2)` represents the same three elements, but in the opposite order `[x(7), x(5), x(3)]`. The second element mentioned in the index range may not actually be present in the resulting subset, for example, `x(7:2:-2)` is the same as `x(7:3:-2)`, and `x(3:6:2)` represents the two element subarray `[x(3), x(5)]`.

Just as the increment defaults to 1 if it is omitted, the start and stop elements of an index range also have default values, namely the first and last possible index values. Hence, if `x` is a one-dimensional array with 10 elements, `x(8:)` is the same as `x(8:10)`. With a negative increment, the defaults are reversed, so that `x(:8:-1)` is the same as `x(10:8:-1)`.

A useful special case of the index range default rules is `x(::-1)`, which represents the array `x` in reverse order.

Beware of a minor subtlety: `x(3:3)` is not the same thing as `x(3)`. An index range always represents an array of values, while a scalar index represents a single value. Hence, `x(3:3)` is an array with a single element, `[x(3)]`.