Use the lists module sublist/2 or sublist/3 functions. The sublist/2 function takes the first N elements from a list, while the sublist/3 function takes a starting and ending point in the list.
% Take the first 5 elements of a list
1> L = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10].
[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
2> lists:sublist(L,5).
[1,2,3,4,5]
% Take 5 elements from a list, starting from the third position.
3> lists:sublist(L,3,5).
[3,4,5,6,7]
A call to either sublist will a return a newly allocated list holding the elements of the given segment. Please note that all list functions are indexed by 1.
Note: The sublist function corrresponds to using the slice operator in Python.
