title: index multiple characters in a list
body: <p>I'm trying to index multiple characters, for example, if the list is: </p>
  
  <pre><code>N00000035,Z,X,Y
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I want to index the set of characters before the first comma: </p>
  
  <pre><code>N00000035
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Here is the code I have so far:</p>
  
  <pre><code>with open(filename+".txt", 'r') as f:
          for item in f:
              print(item[1,8])
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But It doesn't seem to work when I print out "item[1,8]" -- this bit of code is within a larger try/except block and it seems to go straight to except block when I execute the code I have above, which tells me something about it is invalid.</p>
  
  <p>Any help is appreciated!</p>