Creating an empty list in Python

Question

What is the best way to create a new empty list in Python?

l = []

or

l = list()

I am asking this because of two reasons:

1. Technical reasons, as to which is faster. (creating a class causes overhead?)

2. Code readability - which one is the standard convention.

Answer 1

For creating an empty list in Python you can use the below-mentioned piece of code which is faster:-

% python -mtimeit "l=[]" 

10000000 loops, best of 3: 0.0711 usec per loop 

% python -mtimeit "l=list()" 

1000000 loops, best of 3: 0.297 usec per loop

For the readability shake, you should prefer [].

To know more about this you can have a look at the following video tutorial:-