How to remove the first Item from a list?

Question

I have the list [0, 1, 2, 3, 4] I'd like to make it into [1, 2, 3, 4]. How do I go about this?

2018/05/15

Slicing:

x = [0,1,2,3,4]
x = x[1:]

Which would actually return a subset of the original but not modify it.

2010/12/13

>>> x = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> x.pop(0)
0

More on this here.

2010/12/13

you would just do this

l = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4]
l.pop(0)

or l = l[1:]

Pros and Cons

Using pop you can retrieve the value

say x = l.pop(0) x would be 0

2010/12/13

With list slicing, see the Python tutorial about lists for more details:

>>> l = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> l[1:]
[1, 2, 3, 4]

2010/12/13

Then just delete it:

x = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4]
del x[0]
print x
# [1, 2, 3, 4]

2010/12/13

kevpie · Accepted Answer · 3/1/2017 5:47:23 PM

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:

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'])