How to limit for loop iterations within cursor?

Question

I am using a for loop within a SearchCursor to iterate through features in a featureclass.

import arcpy

fc = r'C:\path\to\featureclass'

with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(fc, ["fieldA", "FieldB", "FieldC"]) as cursor:
    for row in cursor:
        # Do something...

I am currently troubleshooting the script and need to find a way to limit the iterations to, say, 5 rather than 3500 as it is currently configured. I know the most basic way to limit the number of iterations in a for loop is as follows:

numbers = [1,2,3,4,5]

for i in numbers[0:2]
     print i

However, this approach does not work when iterating over a cursor object. What method can I use to limit the number of iterations of a for loop within a cursor object wrapped in a with statement?

Answer 1

Add a counter and a logical statement to limit the number of iterations. For example:

import arcpy

fc = r'C:\path\to\featureclass'

count = 1 # Start a counter

with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(fc, ["fieldA", "FieldB", "FieldC"]) as cursor:
    for row in cursor:
        # Do something...
        if count >= 2:
            print "Processing stopped because iterations >= 2"
            sys.exit()

        count += 1