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

Borrowing more_itertools.first_true code yields something decently readable:

def first_true(iterable, default=None, pred=None):
    return next(filter(pred, iterable), default)

def get_first_non_default(items_list, default=None):
    return first_true(items_list, default, pred=lambda x: x!=default)