list.reverse()

Erik Max Francis max at alcyone.com
Fri Nov 15 21:38:36 EST 2002


Mike Dean wrote:

> I think I recall seeing a reasonable explanation for this earlier
> (probably referring actually to list.sort()), but I'm wondering - what
> was the rationale for making list.reverse() reverse a list in-place
> rather than return a new, reversed list?  I'm sure there's a good
> reason, but what might that be?

Optimization.  If you want a copy of a reversed list, make a copy of
your list and then reverse that:

	l2 = l[:]
	l2.reverse()

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, USA / 37 20 N 121 53 W / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Give me chastity, but not yet.
\__/ St. Augustine
    WebVal / http://www.alcyone.com/pyos/webval/
 URL scanner, maintainer, and validator in Python.



More information about the Python-list mailing list