List changes unexpectedly after assignment. How do I clone or copy it to prevent this?

aF. picture aF. · Apr 10, 2010 · Viewed 1.8M times · Source

While using new_list = my_list, any modifications to new_list changes my_list everytime. Why is this, and how can I clone or copy the list to prevent it?

Answer

Felix Kling picture Felix Kling · Apr 10, 2010

With new_list = my_list, you don't actually have two lists. The assignment just copies the reference to the list, not the actual list, so both new_list and my_list refer to the same list after the assignment.

To actually copy the list, you have various possibilities:

  • You can use the builtin list.copy() method (available since Python 3.3):

    new_list = old_list.copy()
    
  • You can slice it:

    new_list = old_list[:]
    

    Alex Martelli's opinion (at least back in 2007) about this is, that it is a weird syntax and it does not make sense to use it ever. ;) (In his opinion, the next one is more readable).

  • You can use the built in list() function:

    new_list = list(old_list)
    
  • You can use generic copy.copy():

    import copy
    new_list = copy.copy(old_list)
    

    This is a little slower than list() because it has to find out the datatype of old_list first.

  • If the list contains objects and you want to copy them as well, use generic copy.deepcopy():

    import copy
    new_list = copy.deepcopy(old_list)
    

    Obviously the slowest and most memory-needing method, but sometimes unavoidable.

Example:

import copy

class Foo(object):
    def __init__(self, val):
         self.val = val

    def __repr__(self):
        return 'Foo({!r})'.format(self.val)

foo = Foo(1)

a = ['foo', foo]
b = a.copy()
c = a[:]
d = list(a)
e = copy.copy(a)
f = copy.deepcopy(a)

# edit orignal list and instance 
a.append('baz')
foo.val = 5

print('original: %r\nlist.copy(): %r\nslice: %r\nlist(): %r\ncopy: %r\ndeepcopy: %r'
      % (a, b, c, d, e, f))

Result:

original: ['foo', Foo(5), 'baz']
list.copy(): ['foo', Foo(5)]
slice: ['foo', Foo(5)]
list(): ['foo', Foo(5)]
copy: ['foo', Foo(5)]
deepcopy: ['foo', Foo(1)]