"For" loop first iteration

Something like this should work.

for i, member in enumerate(something.get()):
    if i == 0:
         # Do thing
    # Code for everything

However, I would strongly recommend thinking about your code to see if you really have to do it this way, because it's sort of "dirty". Better would be to fetch the element that needs special handling up front, then do regular handling for all the others in the loop.

The only reason I could see for not doing it this way is for a big list you'd be getting from a generator expression (which you wouldn't want to fetch up front because it wouldn't fit in memory), or similar situations.

You have several choices for the Head-Tail design pattern.

seq= something.get()
root.copy( seq[0] )
foo( seq[0] )
for member in seq[1:]:
    somewhereElse.copy(member)
    foo( member )

Or this

seq_iter= iter( something.get() )
head = seq_iter.next()
root.copy( head )
foo( head )
for member in seq_iter:
    somewhereElse.copy( member )
    foo( member )

People whine that this is somehow not "DRY" because the "redundant foo(member)" code. That's a ridiculous claim. If that was true then all functions could only be used once. What's the point of defining a function if you can only have one reference?

how about:

my_array = something.get()
for member in my_array:
    if my_array.index(member) == 0:
        root.copy(member)
    else:
        somewhereElse.copy(member)
    foo(member)

or maybe:

for index, member in enumerate(something.get()):
    if index == 0:
        root.copy(member)
    else:
        somewhereElse.copy(member)
    foo(member)

Documentation of index-method.

This works:

for number, member in enumerate(something.get()):
    if not number:
        root.copy(member)
    else:
        somewhereElse.copy(member)
    foo(member)

In most cases, though, I'd suggest just iterating over whatever[1:] and doing the root thing outside the loop; that's usually more readable. Depends on your use case, of course.