Efficient way to rotate a list in python

Question

What is the most efficient way to rotate a list in python? Right now I have something like this:

>>> def rotate(l, n):
...     return l[n:] + l[:n]         


        

Answer 1

This also depends on if you want to shift the list in place (mutating it), or if you want the function to return a new list. Because, according to my tests, something like this is at least twenty times faster than your implementation that adds two lists:

def shiftInPlace(l, n):
    n = n % len(l)
    head = l[:n]
    l[:n] = []
    l.extend(head)
    return l

In fact, even adding a l = l[:] to the top of that to operate on a copy of the list passed in is still twice as fast.

Various implementations with some timing at http://gist.github.com/288272