pythonlist

How do I remove the first item from a list?

How do I remove the first item from a list?

[0, 1, 2, 3]   →   [1, 2, 3]
Solution

  • You can find a short collection of useful list functions here.

    list.pop(index)

    >>> l = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']
>>> l.pop(0)
'a'
>>> l
['b', 'c', 'd']
>>>

    del list[index]

    >>> l = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']
>>> del l[0]
>>> l
['b', 'c', 'd']
>>>

    These both modify your original list.

    Others have suggested using slicing:

    Also, if you are performing many pop(0), you should look at collections.deque

    from collections import deque
>>> l = deque(['a', 'b', 'c', 'd'])
>>> l.popleft()
'a'
>>> l
deque(['b', 'c', 'd'])