Question about idioms for clearing a list

[Will McGugan]

Steven Watanabe wrote:
> I know that the standard idioms for clearing a list are:
>
>   (1) mylist[:] = []
>   (2) del mylist[:]
>
> I guess I'm not in the "slicing frame of mind", as someone put it, but
> can someone explain what the difference is between these and:
>
>   (3) mylist = []
>
> Why are (1) and (2) preferred? I think the first two are changing the
> list in-place, but why is that better? Isn't the end result the same?

I'm wondering why there is no 'clear' for lists. It feels like a common
operation for mutable containers. :-/


Will McGugan