[Python-Dev] list.shift() (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum gvanrossum@beopen.com
Fri, 17 Mar 2000 17:00:18 -0500

Ka-Ping Yee wrote:

Has list.shift() been proposed? # pretend lists are implemented in Python and 'self' is a list def shift(self): item = self[0] del self[:1] return item This would make queues read nicely... use "append" and "pop" for a stack, "append" and "shift" for a queue. (This is while on the thought-train of "making built-in types do more, rather than introducing more special types", as you'll see in my next message.)

You can do this using list.pop(0). I don't think the name "shift" is very intuitive (smells of sh and Perl :-). Do we need a new function?

--Guido