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
[] []

It appears to me that del will give you the memory back, while assigning a new list will make the old one be deleted only when the gc runs.matter.

This may be useful for large lists, but for small list it should be negligible.

Edit: As Algorias, it doesn't matter.

Note that

del old_list[ 0:len(old_list) ]

is equivalent to

del old_list[:]

del list[:] 

Will delete the values of that list variable

del list

Will delete the variable itself from memory