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Append integer to beginning of list in Python [duplicate]

This question already has answers here: How do I prepend to a short python list? (7 answers) Closed 2 years ago.

How do I prepend an integer to the beginning of a list?

[1, 2, 3]  ⟶  [42, 1, 2, 3]
in terms of computation time, is new_list = [x] + your_list less efficient than your_list.insert(x)?

M
Mateen Ulhaq
>>> x = 42
>>> xs = [1, 2, 3]
>>> xs.insert(0, x)
>>> xs
[42, 1, 2, 3]

How it works:

list.insert(index, value)

Insert an item at a given position. The first argument is the index of the element before which to insert, so xs.insert(0, x) inserts at the front of the list, and xs.insert(len(xs), x) is equivalent to xs.append(x). Negative values are treated as being relative to the end of the list.


The most efficient approach. Faster than [x]+[y]. See solutions here: stackoverflow.com/questions/8537916/…
@BlackJack The question is about how to append integer to beginning of list. Whatever he describe that is not the right thing to follow. So why to guide him to take the wrong path? when there are better thing he can do for his requirement.
In that case question title should be different. Anyway there is no point of arguing, as the point is clear for both of us. Anyway thank you for pointing out. :)
use append(), then reverse() function, as insert(0,val) function will take more time,because it will involve shifting of every element. i have experienced a time out issue due to insert
@VishalYadav Can you please share the benchmarking?
M
Mateen Ulhaq
>>> x = 42
>>> xs = [1, 2, 3]
>>> [x] + xs
[42, 1, 2, 3]

Note: don't use list as a variable name.


I just did some benchmarking. li.insert(0, a) is around 5x faster than li = [a] + li. Keep this in mind if you are doing this many times.
@MarcelPfeiffer It should be noted that li.insert(0, a) is mutating li. li = [a] + li is creating a new instance will all of the values. This is an important distinction if other things have a reference to the list instance.
It would be nice for python to add a list.push_front(item) function. This will be obvious and less error-prone.
@KeminZhou I'd prefer the name "prepend" as it follows naturally from "append" as "push_front" follows naturally from "push_back".
@god of llamas, I agree with you. Shorter is always better.
t
timgeb

Note that if you are trying to do that operation often, especially in loops, a list is the wrong data structure.

Lists are not optimized for modifications at the front, and somelist.insert(0, something) is an O(n) operation.

somelist.pop(0) and del somelist[0] are also O(n) operations.

The correct data structure to use is a deque from the collections module. deques expose an interface that is similar to those of lists, but are optimized for modifications from both endpoints. They have an appendleft method for insertions at the front.

Demo:

In [1]: lst = [0]*1000
In [2]: timeit -n1000 lst.insert(0, 1)
1000 loops, best of 3: 794 ns per loop
In [3]: from collections import deque
In [4]: deq = deque([0]*1000)
In [5]: timeit -n1000 deq.appendleft(1)
1000 loops, best of 3: 73 ns per loop

Sometimes switching structures isn't a thing you can do easily, and if you need to append a bunch of stuff to the front, you can call .reverse then add all the stuff to the end, then call reverse again. You'd get two O(n) operations but then use the O(1) adds of list.
in terms of computation time, is new_list = [x] + your_list less efficient than your_list.insert(x)?
v
v2b

Another way of doing the same,

list[0:0] = [a]

You don't need the first 0. The colon already say that's before the start -- my_list[:0]=[a] does it.
Elegant solution!
This is interesting to know about, but I would avoid this because I think it might cause confusion.
This is not elegant, it's unnecessarily confusing and difficult to read.
H
HoangYell

You can use Unpack list:

a = 5 li = [1,2,3] li = [a, *li] => [5, 1, 2, 3]


D
Dovi Salomon

Based on some (minimal) benchmarks using the timeit module it seems that the following has similar if not better performance than the accepted answer

new_lst = [a, *lst]

As with [a] + list this will create a new list and not mutate lst.

If your intention is to mutate the list then use lst.insert(0, a).


s
sahil panindre
list_1.insert(0,ur_data)

make sure that ur_data is of string type so if u have data= int(5) convert it to ur_data = str(data)


B
Benyamin Jafari

Alternative:

>>> from collections import deque

>>> my_list = deque()
>>> my_list.append(1)       # append right
>>> my_list.append(2)       # append right
>>> my_list.append(3)       # append right
>>> my_list.appendleft(100) # append left
>>> my_list

deque([100, 1, 2, 3])

>>> my_list[0]

100

[NOTE]:

collections.deque is faster than Python pure list in a loop Relevant-Post.


Thank you so much. This made me pass my codeforces problem
E
Erico9001

New lists can be made by simply adding lists together.

list1 = ['value1','value2','value3']
list2 = ['value0']
newlist=list2+list1
print(newlist)

This is already covered by the top rated answer. Please explain how this adds new information to the issue.
O, it adds nothing
P
Paul Rooney

None of these worked for me. I converted the first element to be part of a series (a single element series), and converted the second element also to be a series, and used append function.

l = ((pd.Series(<first element>)).append(pd.Series(<list of other elements>))).tolist()