import bs4 as bs import pickle import requests

def save_sp500_tickers(): resp = requests.get('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S%26P_500_companies') soup = bs.BeautifulSoup(resp.text, 'lxml') table = soup.find('table', {'class': 'wikitable sortable'}) tickers = [] for row in table.findAll('tr')[1:]: ticker = row.findAll('td')[0].text tickers.append(ticker) with open("sp500tickers.pickle","wb") as f: pickle.dump(tickers,f) return tickers

save_sp500_tickers()

In this context, what does the [1:]: mean and how does beatifulsoup know not to go on and parse from the second table on the webpage. How would I parse the second table( ie Recent changes to the list of S&P 500 Components table on the webpage) and not the first?