How to Initialize an Empty List in Python

This tutorial demonstrates ways on how to initialize an empty list in Python. This will cover defining a list of size n or defining a variable-sized list with the values all defaulting to empty.

When you declare a list in Python, it always starts off at size 0 since there is no explicit way of declaring a Python list’s size since Python lists are variable in nature. This tutorial will provide a way to initialize a fixed-size list with all the values defaulted to None or empty.

Initializing n-Sized None Values to a List in Python

The best way to solve this problem is to initialize an n-Sized list with the values all set to None, which indicates that a value is empty in Python.

To do this, initialize a singleton list with the value None and multiply it by n, which is the list’s preferred size.

n = 15  # Size of the List
lst = [None] * n

print(lst)

Output:

[None, None, None, None, None, None, None, None, None, None, None, None, None, None, None]

The output is a list of size 15 as defined by n with all the values set to None, equivalent to an empty value.

This solution is the easiest and most practical way to initialize a list with empty values in Python. However, this is a workaround to the predefined nature of a Python list being variable in size.