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Christian Barra
Christian Barra

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at christianbarra.com

How to reverse a list in Python

Reversing a list in Python is really, really easy.

This doesn't apply only to list but to sequence in general (string and tuple for example).

msg = "hello there"
print(msg[::-1])
# ereht olleh

my_tuple = (1, 2, 3)
print(my_tuple[::-1])
# (3, 2, 1)
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The secret behind this magic? The slice object.

name = "christian"
print(name.__getitem__(slice(None, None, -1)))
# 'naitsirhc'
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While old I really recommend reading the Python 2.3 What's new, when the support for built-in types was introduced.

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