How is access to a specific element in a list by its index performed?

In Python, to access an element of a list by its position number, indexing with square brackets [] is used. Indexes start at 0, meaning the first element has index 0, the second — 1, and so on.

Example:

my_list = ['apple', 'banana', 'cherry']

# Get the first element
print(my_list[0])  # Outputs: apple

# Get the third element
print(my_list[2])  # Outputs: cherry

If you need to get an element from the end of the list, you can use negative indexes:

print(my_list[-1])  # Last element: cherry
print(my_list[-2])  # Second to last element: banana

It is important to remember that accessing an index outside the range of the list will raise an IndexError.