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

My use case was only to set the value of a local variable.

Personally I found the try and except style cleaner to read

items = [10, 20]
try: first_item = items[0]
except IndexError: first_item = None
print first_item

than slicing a list.

items = [10, 20]
first_item = (items[:1] or [None, ])[0]
print first_item