Python idiom to return first item or None

Question

I\'m sure there\'s a simpler way of doing this that\'s just not occurring to me.

I\'m calling a bunch of methods that return a list. The list may be empty. If the

Answer 1

Regarding idioms, there is an itertools recipe called nth.

From itertools recipes:

def nth(iterable, n, default=None):
    "Returns the nth item or a default value"
    return next(islice(iterable, n, None), default)

If you want one-liners, consider installing a library that implements this recipe for you, e.g. more_itertools:

import more_itertools as mit

mit.nth([3, 2, 1], 0)
# 3

mit.nth([], 0)                                             # default is `None`
# None

Another tool is available that only returns the first item, called more_itertools.first.

mit.first([3, 2, 1])
# 3

mit.first([], default=None)
# None

These itertools scale generically for any iterable, not only for lists.