clear derived list

[Jp Calderone]

On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 05:08:26PM -0600, John Hunter wrote:
> 
> I have a class derived from a list.  I want to be able to set the list
> from another list, first clearing the existing members.  I don't see
> an analog to the clear method of dictionaries.
> 
> Here is what I am doing now
> 
> class mylist(list):
>     def set(self, seq):
>         # flush the old list
>         [self.pop() for i in range(len(self))]
>         self.extend(seq)

  Aside from the obvious problem, I want to point out that this is a
terrible abuse of list comprehensions.  This is not the point.  A good rule
of thumb is that if you're not storing the result of a list comprehension,
you should -not- be using a list comprehension.

  Now, here are a couple alternatives:

    del self[:]
    self.extend(seq)

  or

    self[:] = seq

  Jp

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