# Ordinal selector

Learn how to get an item by its position in the list.

The ordinal selector allows you to access an element at a specific position in a [list](/reference/cql/data-types/core/collection) using its ordinal number instead of its index or key.

> **So can I finally count like a human?**
>
> That's right! With the ordinal selector, you can use natural counting, starting at 1, instead of the typical 0-based indexing in programming.

For example, to access the second item in a list, you can simply use:

```cql
let transport = ["🚀", "🚗", "🚆"];

transport[2nd] // 🚗
```

For a real-world example, let's say you want to access the second item added to a shopping cart:

```cql
cart.items[2nd] or else null
```

Here, we use the `or else` operator to return `null` if the cart is empty. Otherwise, the query would fail with an error.