>> I don't want to test whether the length of the list >> is greater than 0 [...] - I want to know whether the >> list is empty (or not empty). > > I fail to see the difference between "length greater than 0" > and "list is not empty". They are, by definition, the same > thing, aren't they?
Yes, they test the same property, and so would for x in foo: # foo is empty if it does not have any elements # not empty break else: # empty People also write, as a test for empty lists, if foo == []: # foo is empty when it is equal to the empty list # empty if foo != []: # not empty Yet another equivalent test would be try: foo[0] # foo is empty if it does not have a zeroeth element except IndexError: # empty else: # not empty They are *not* the same thing, by definition, as they work in different ways. They just yield the same result. There are many equivalent ways to spell this property; some are more direct than others. I find that referring to the boolean-ness of a list is the most direct way to test whether a list is empty - just as testing for the boolean-ness of an integer is the most direct way to test whether it is 0. Regards, Martin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
