How do I remove the first item from a list?

How do I remove the first item from a list?

[0, 1, 2, 3]   →   [1, 2, 3]

You can find a short collection of useful list functions here.

list.pop(index)

>>> l = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']
>>> l.pop(0)
'a'
>>> l
['b', 'c', 'd']
>>>

del list[index]

>>> l = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']
>>> del l[0]
>>> l
['b', 'c', 'd']
>>>

These both modify your original list.

Others have suggested using slicing:

• Copies the list

• Can return a subset

Also, if you are performing many pop(0), you should look at collections.deque

from collections import deque
>>> l = deque(['a', 'b', 'c', 'd'])
>>> l.popleft()
'a'
>>> l
deque(['b', 'c', 'd'])

• Provides higher performance popping from left end of the list

Stack Overflow Q#4426663, score: 1697