Difference between append vs. extend list methods in Python
列表方法append()和extend()之间有什么区别？
append : Appends object at end.
x = [1, 2, 3]
x.append([4, 5])
print (x)
gives you: [1, 2, 3, [4, 5]]
extend : Extends list by appending elements from the iterable.
x = [1, 2, 3]
x.extend([4, 5])
print (x)
gives you: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
append adds an element to a list, extend concatenates the first list with another list (or another iterable, not necessarily a list.)
>>> li = ['a', 'b', 'mpilgrim', 'z', 'example']
>>> li
['a', 'b', 'mpilgrim', 'z', 'example']
>>> li.append("new")
>>> li
['a', 'b', 'mpilgrim', 'z', 'example', 'new']
>>> li.insert(2, "new")
>>> li
['a', 'b', 'new', 'mpilgrim', 'z', 'example', 'new']
>>> li.extend(["two", "elements"])
>>> li
['a', 'b', 'new', 'mpilgrim', 'z', 'example', 'new', 'two', 'elements']
From Dive into Python.
What is the difference between the list methods append and extend?
append adds its argument as a single element to the end of a list. The length of the list itself will increase by one. extend iterates over its argument adding each element to the list, extending the list. The length of the list will increase by however many elements were in the iterable argument. append
The list.append method appends an object to the end of the list.
my_list.append(object)
Whatever the object is, whether a number, a string, another list, or something else, it gets added onto the end of my_list as a single entry on the list.
>>> my_list
['foo', 'bar']
>>> my_list.append('baz')
>>> my_list
['foo', 'bar', 'baz']
So keep in mind that a list is an object. If you append another list onto a list, the first list will be a single object at the end of the list (which may not be what you want):
>>> another_list = [1, 2, 3]
>>> my_list.append(another_list)
>>> my_list
['foo', 'bar', 'baz', [1, 2, 3]]
#^^^^^^^^^--- single item on end of list.
extend
The list.extend method extends a list by appending elements from an iterable:
my_list.extend(iterable)
So with extend, each element of the iterable gets appended onto the list. For example:
>>> my_list
['foo', 'bar']
>>> another_list = [1, 2, 3]
>>> my_list.extend(another_list)
>>> my_list
['foo', 'bar', 1, 2, 3]
Keep in mind that a string is an iterable, so if you extend a list with a string, you'll append each character as you iterate over the string (which may not be what you want):
>>> my_list.extend('baz')
>>> my_list
['foo', 'bar', 1, 2, 3, 'b', 'a', 'z']
Operator Overload, __add__ , ( + ) and __iadd__ ( += )
Both + and += operators are defined for list . They are semantically similar to extend.
my_list + another_list creates a third list in memory, so you can return the result of it, but it requires that the second iterable be a list.
my_list += another_list modifies the list in-place (it is the in-place operator, and lists are mutable objects, as we've seen) so it does not create a new list. It also works like extend, in that the second iterable can be any kind of iterable.
Don't get confused - my_list = my_list + another_list is not equivalent to += - it gives you a brand new list assigned to my_list.
Time Complexity
Append has constant time complexity, O(1).
Extend has time complexity, O(k).
Iterating through the multiple calls to append adds to the complexity, making it equivalent to that of extend, and since extend's iteration is implemented in C, it will always be faster if you intend to append successive items from an iterable onto a list.
Performance
You may wonder what is more performant, since append can be used to achieve the same outcome as extend. The following functions do the same thing:
def append(alist, iterable):
for item in iterable:
alist.append(item)
def extend(alist, iterable):
alist.extend(iterable)
So let's time them:
import timeit
>>> min(timeit.repeat(lambda: append([], "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz")))
2.867846965789795
>>> min(timeit.repeat(lambda: extend([], "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz")))
0.8060121536254883
Addressing a comment on timings
A commenter said:
Perfect answer, I just miss the timing of comparing adding only one element
Do the semantically correct thing. If you want to append all elements in an iterable, use extend . If you're just adding one element, use append .
Ok, so let's create an experiment to see how this works out in time:
def append_one(a_list, element):
a_list.append(element)
def extend_one(a_list, element):
"""creating a new list is semantically the most direct
way to create an iterable to give to extend"""
a_list.extend([element])
import timeit
And we see that going out of our way to create an iterable just to use extend is a (minor) waste of time:
>>> min(timeit.repeat(lambda: append_one([], 0)))
0.2082819009956438
>>> min(timeit.repeat(lambda: extend_one([], 0)))
0.2397019260097295
We learn from this that there's nothing gained from using extend when we have only one element to append.
Also, these timings are not that important. I am just showing them to make the point that, in Python, doing the semantically correct thing is doing things the Right Way™.
It's conceivable that you might test timings on two comparable operations and get an ambiguous or inverse result. Just focus on doing the semantically correct thing.
Conclusion
We see that extend is semantically clearer, and that it can run much faster than append , when you intend to append each element in an iterable to a list.
If you only have a single element (not in an iterable) to add to the list, use append .
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