Rationale for this change

Closes ARROW-18281, which has been open since 2022. The list_slice kernel currently rejects start == stop, but should return empty lists instead (following Python slicing semantics).

The implementation already handles this case correctly. When ARROW-18282 added step support, bit_util::CeilDiv(stop - start, step) naturally returns 0 for start == stop, producing empty lists. The only issue was the validation check (start >= stop) that prevented this from working.

What changes are included in this PR?

• Changed validation from start >= stop to start > stop
• Updated error message
• Added test cases

Are these changes tested?

Yes, tests were added.

Are there any user-facing changes?

Yes.

import pyarrow as pa
pc.list_slice([[1,2,3]], 0, 0)

Before:

pyarrow.lib.ArrowInvalid: `start`(0) should be greater than 0 and smaller than `stop`(0)

After:

<pyarrow.lib.ListArray object at 0x1a01b8b20>
[
 []
]

• GitHub Issue: [C++][Python] Support start == stop in list_slice kernel #33459