What way is the best to check an empty list?

[Niklas Norrthon]

On 26 Mar, 04:31, Steve Holden <st... at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> Stef Mientki wrote:
>
> > Now it would be nice to allow iteration over others too, like None .
> >    a = None
> >    for item in a :
> >          do_something_with_item
>
> To me that makes about as much sense as writing
>
>     for x in 1.0:
>         print x
>
> and expecting it to print 1.0. Numbers just aren't iterable. Neither is
> None. A TypeError exception is the only appropriate response.
>
I can see a use case for the latter:

def some_function(arg, coll=None):
    do_stuff(arg)
    for item in coll:
        do_more(arg, item)

But that can easily be achieved with the "or" operator as Michiel
Overton notes elsewhere in this thread:

def some_function(arg, coll=None):
    do_stuff(arg)
    for item in coll or []:  # <= Here or is used to make None behave
as an empty collection
        do_more(arg, item)

/Niklas Norrthon