list.pop(0) vs. collections.dequeue

[Steve Howell]

The v2.6.4 version of the tutorial says this:

'''
It is also possible to use a list as a queue, where the first element
added is the first element retrieved (“first-in, first-out”); however,
lists are not efficient for this purpose. While appends and pops from
the end of list are fast, doing inserts or pops from the beginning of
a list is slow (because all of the other elements have to be shifted
by one).
'''

Is that really true in CPython?  It seems like you could advance the
pointer instead of shifting all the elements.  It would create some
nuances with respect to reclaiming the memory, but it seems like an
easy way to make lists perform better under a pretty reasonable use
case.

Does anybody know off the top of their head if the "have-to-be-shifted-
by-one" warning is actually valid?


http://docs.python.org/tutorial/datastructures.html