How to trim a list in Python

Question

Suppose I have a list with X elements

[4,76,2,8,6,4,3,7,2,1...]

I\'d like the first 5 elements. Unless it has less than 5 elements.

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Answer 1

To trim a list in place without creating copies of it, use del:

>>> t = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> # delete elements starting from index 4 to the end
>>> del t[4:]
>>> t
[1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> # delete elements starting from index 5 to the end
>>> # but the list has only 4 elements -- no error
>>> del t[5:]
>>> t
[1, 2, 3, 4]
>>>