Efficient way to rotate a list in python

Question

What is the most efficient way to rotate a list in python? Right now I have something like this:

>>> def rotate(l, n):
...     return l[n:] + l[:n]         


        

Answer 1

Possibly a ringbuffer is more suitable. It is not a list, although it is likely that it can behave enough like a list for your purposes.

The problem is that the efficiency of a shift on a list is O(n), which becomes significant for large enough lists.

Shifting in a ringbuffer is simply updating the head location which is O(1)