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

The following method is O(n) in place with constant auxiliary memory:

def rotate(arr, shift):
  pivot = shift % len(arr)
  dst = 0
  src = pivot
  while (dst != src):
    arr[dst], arr[src] = arr[src], arr[dst]
    dst += 1
    src += 1
    if src == len(arr):
      src = pivot
    elif dst == pivot:
      pivot = src

Note that in python, this approach is horribly inefficient compared to others as it can't take advantage of native implementations of any of the pieces.

Answer 2

Jon Bentley in Programming Pearls (Column 2) describes an elegant and efficient algorithm for rotating an n-element vector x left by i positions:

Let's view the problem as transforming the array ab into the array ba, but let's also assume that we have a function that reverses the elements in a specified portion of the array. Starting with ab, we reverse a to get arb, reverse b to get arbr, and then reverse the whole thing to get (arbr)r, which is exactly ba. This results in the following code for rotation:

reverse(0, i-1)
reverse(i, n-1)
reverse(0, n-1)

This can be translated to Python as follows:

def rotate(x, i):
    i %= len(x)
    x[:i] = reversed(x[:i])
    x[i:] = reversed(x[i:])
    x[:] = reversed(x)
    return x

Demo:

>>> def rotate(x, i):
...     i %= len(x)
...     x[:i] = reversed(x[:i])
...     x[i:] = reversed(x[i:])
...     x[:] = reversed(x)
...     return x
... 
>>> rotate(list('abcdefgh'), 1)
['b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'a']
>>> rotate(list('abcdefgh'), 3)
['d', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'a', 'b', 'c']
>>> rotate(list('abcdefgh'), 8)
['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h']
>>> rotate(list('abcdefgh'), 9)
['b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'a']