python - Head and tail in one line

100
votes

Is there a pythonic way to unpack a list in the first element and the "tail" in a single command?

For example:

>> head, tail = **some_magic applied to** [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55]
>> head
1
>>> tail
[1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55]
5
pythonlisttailhead
Remember that lists are not implemented as singly-linked lists in Python, so this operation is costly (as in: the whole list needs to be copied). Depending on what you want to achieve, this might or might not be a problem. I am just mentioning that because this type of list destructuring is often found in functional languages, where it is actually a very cheap operation. - Niklas B.

5 Answers

209
votes

Under Python 3.x, you can do this nicely:

>>> head, *tail = [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55]
>>> head
1
>>> tail
[1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55]

A new feature in 3.x is to use the * operator in unpacking, to mean any extra values. It is described in PEP 3132 - Extended Iterable Unpacking. This also has the advantage of working on any iterable, not just sequences.

It's also really readable.

As described in the PEP, if you want to do the equivalent under 2.x (without potentially making a temporary list), you have to do this:

it = iter(iterable)
head, tail = next(it), list(it)

As noted in the comments, this also provides an opportunity to get a default value for head rather than throwing an exception. If you want this behaviour, next() takes an optional second argument with a default value, so next(it, None) would give you None if there was no head element.

Naturally, if you are working on a list, the easiest way without the 3.x syntax is:

head, tail = seq[0], seq[1:]
37
votes
>>> mylist = [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55]
>>> head, tail = mylist[0], mylist[1:]
>>> head
1
>>> tail
[1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55]
9
votes

For O(1) complexity of head,tail operation you should use deque however.

Following way:

from collections import deque
l = deque([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9])
head, tail = l.popleft(), l

It's useful when you must iterate through all elements of the list. For example in naive merging 2 partitions in merge sort.

2
votes

Python 2, using lambda

>>> head, tail = (lambda lst: (lst[0], lst[1:]))([1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55])
>>> head
1
>>> tail
[1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55]
2
votes

Building on the Python 2 solution from @GarethLatty, the following is a way to get a single line equivalent without intermediate variables in Python 2. 

t=iter([1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55]);h,t = [(h,list(t)) for h in t][0]

If you need it to be exception-proof (i.e. supporting empty list), then add:

t=iter([]);h,t = ([(h,list(t)) for h in t]+[(None,[])])[0]

If you want to do it without the semicolon, use:

h,t = ([(h,list(t)) for t in [iter([1,2,3,4])] for h in t]+[(None,[])])[0]