next((x for x in mylist if x))

And, in Python 3, thanks to filter returning an iterator, you’d do this:

next(filter(bool,mylist))

It still is pretty common. Common enough to make it aggravating to write a function to do that nearly every time. My idea is to add first and last functions that do just that.

Stuff that’s open to lots of debate:

• Names. They’re not very creative; I know.

• Builtin or itertools. I’m personally leaning towards the latter at the moment.

Implementing it in itertools would be simple:

def first(it):
    return next(filter(bool,it))

def last(it):
    return next(reversed(filter(bool,it)))