Python List - “reserving” space ( ~ resizing)

Question

I am given a list l and I want to do assignment:

l[index] = val

But there might be a case when the list is too small.

Answer 1

Perhaps this does what you want:

def resize(l, newsize, filling=None):                                                                                  
    if newsize > len(l):                                                                                 
        l.extend([filling for x in xrange(len(l), newsize)])                                                 
    else:                                                                                                
        del l[newsize:]