Difference between append and extend in Python

append and extend are list methods in Python which can be used to combine multiple lists. But what is the difference between them? When should you use one over another, let’s find out.

The official documentation describes them as:

• list.append(x): Add an item to the end of the list; equivalent to a[len(a):] = [x].

• list.extend(L): Extend the list by appending all the items in the given list; equivalent to a[len(a):] = L.

Notice the bold words in the definition. append adds an item and extend appends all the items of the given list.

Let’s take an example:

append a list to another list in Python

some_list = ['string', 1, 'another string', 6.5]
another_list = ['new data', 12]
some_list.append(another_list)
print some_list

Output:

['string', 1, 'another string', 6.5, ['new data', 12]]

As you can see, the append method took an item i.e. the object of another list and added it to some_list as it is.

extend a list with another list in Python

some_list = ['string', 1, 'another string', 6.5]
another_list = ['new data', 12]
some_list.extend(another_list)
print some_list

Output:

['string', 1, 'another string', 6.5, 'new data', 12]

In case of extend you can see that all the items from another_list were appended to some_list one by one. So you can say extend method concatenates one list with another list.

Quiz

Q: What will be the output of below code:

some_list = ['string', 1, 'another string', 6.5]
data = 'hello'
some_list.extend(data)
print some_list

A: Output is

['string', 1, 'another string', 6.5, 'h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o']

Explanation: If you notice carefully, data is a string and strings in Python are iterable. Therefore the extend method iterated over all characters in the string one by one and appended them to the list.

So based on above we can say that below 2 code snippets are equivalent:

for data in iterator:
    some_list.append(data)

some_list.extend(iterator)