Different ways of clearing lists

Clearing a list in place will affect all other references of the same list.

For example, this method doesn't affect other references:

>>> a = [1, 2, 3]
>>> b = a
>>> a = []
>>> print(a)
[]
>>> print(b)
[1, 2, 3]

But this one does:

>>> a = [1, 2, 3]
>>> b = a
>>> del a[:]      # equivalent to   del a[0:len(a)]
>>> print(a)
[]
>>> print(b)
[]
>>> a is b
True

You could also do:

>>> a[:] = []

There is a very simple way to clear a python list. Use del list_name[:].

For example:

>>> a = [1, 2, 3]
>>> b = a
>>> del a[:]
>>> print a, b
[] []

Doing alist = [] does not clear the list, just creates an empty list and binds it to the variable alist. The old list will still exist if it had other variable bindings.

To actually clear a list in-place, you can use any of these ways:

1. alist.clear() # Python 3.3+, most obvious
2. del alist[:]
3. alist[:] = []
4. alist *= 0 # fastest

See the Mutable Sequence Types documentation page for more details.