Question

I would think that if i did the following code in python

var = [0].extend(range(1,10))

then var would be a list with the values 0 – 9 in it.

What gives?

Answer 1

As Oscar López and others have already explained, extend is a command, which returns None, to abide by command/query separation.

They’ve all suggested fixing this by using extend as a command, as intended. But there’s an alternative: use a query instead:

>>> var = [0] + range(1, 10)

It’s important to understand the difference here. extend modifies your [0], turning it into [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. But the + operator leaves your [0] alone, and returns a new list [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9].

In cases where you’ve got other references to the list and want to change them all, obviously you need extend.

However, in cases where you’re just using [0] as a value, using + not only allows you to write compact, fluid code (as you were trying to), it also avoids mutating values. This means the same code works if you’re using immutable values (like tuples) instead of lists, but more importantly, it’s critical to a style of functional programming that avoids side effects. (There are many reasons this style is useful, but one obvious one is that immutable objects and side-effect-free functions are inherently thread-safe.)