list() converts the iterable passed to it to a list. If the itertable is already a list then a shallow copy is returned, i.e only the outermost container is new rest of the objects are still the same.
>>> t = (1,2,3,4,[5,6,7,8],9)
>>> lst = list(t)
>>> lst[4] is t[4] #outermost container is now a list() but inner items are still same.
True
>>> lst1 = [[[2,3,4]]]
>>> id(lst1)
140270501696936
>>> lst2 = list(lst1)
>>> id(lst2)
140270478302096
>>> lst1[0] is lst2[0]
True
Answer from Ashwini Chaudhary on Stack OverflowVideos
list() converts the iterable passed to it to a list. If the itertable is already a list then a shallow copy is returned, i.e only the outermost container is new rest of the objects are still the same.
>>> t = (1,2,3,4,[5,6,7,8],9)
>>> lst = list(t)
>>> lst[4] is t[4] #outermost container is now a list() but inner items are still same.
True
>>> lst1 = [[[2,3,4]]]
>>> id(lst1)
140270501696936
>>> lst2 = list(lst1)
>>> id(lst2)
140270478302096
>>> lst1[0] is lst2[0]
True
Python has a well-established documentation set for every release version, readable at https://docs.python.org/. The documentation for list() states that list() is merely a way of constructing a list object, of which these are the listed ways:
- Using a pair of square brackets to denote the empty list: []
- Using square brackets, separating items with commas: [a], [a, b, c]
- Using a list comprehension: [x for x in iterable]
- Using the type constructor: list() or list(iterable)
The list() function accepts any iterable as its argument, and the return value is a list object.
Further reading: https://docs.python.org/3.4/library/stdtypes.html#typesseq-list