Hi. I apologize if i am having difficulties to explain myself in English. Also i just realise that i wasnt answering to the list, but directly to Brett Cannon. Sorry for that. Also i am taking into account that you are right and my concept of how memory is handled here for lists is way too different as how i am more used to work in firmwares. Anyway, the concept of my idea comes of my understanding of an low-leveled array. I do understand that poping returns only a pointer to that element. I didnt understand that every element inside a list is also a pointer to a python type, so the data is not copied, but the pointer is. The thing is that the elements on my list are just bytes. (unsigned char), and i think that an array of this type of data is called in python immutable, which means that i may not be using the right datatype. Anyway. slice support on pop(), and/or the ability to skip elements in a for loop without restarting the iteration will clear up a lot of code. If my scenario is yet no clear i give below some more details: When i think on how this will work on memory: def pop_slice(lis, n): tem = lis[:-n] del lis[:-n] return tem I think in "copying the elements of an array": BYTE* pop_slice(BYTE* list, unsigned int n){ BYTE* temp = malloc(n*sizeof(BYTE)); int i; for(i=0 ; i < n ; i++) { temp[i] = list[i]; } free(list, n); return temp; } Most python books and tutorials clearly says that this operation L[start:end] copies the elements requested. And being copy i understand the above behavior, which is less efficient than advancing the pointer. But i wanted to do (with "pop multiple bytes at once") is: typedef unsigned char BYTE; BYTE array[BIG_SIZE]; BYTE* incomming_buffer_pointer = &array[0]; BYTE* incomming_packet_pointer = &array[0]; BYTE* pop_slice(BYTE* list, unsigned int n){ BYTE* temp; temp = list; list = &list[n]; return temp; } .. incomming_packet_pointer = pop_slice( incomming_buffer_pointer , PACKET_SIZE) if (parse_packet_is_not_corrupt( incomming_packet_pointer ) ) parse_new_packet( incomming_packet_pointer ); else .... .. Thanks for analizing the idea. Jacobi Diego