When to Use List Comprehension in Python

Jul 29, 2025

Some features of Python are in nearly every guide, but are they are useful in practice? Consider the list comprehension syntax. It does a similar thing to the map built-in in most programs—it creates a new list from an existing iterable.

To be fair, list comprehension has some advantages over the map built-in. It can remove elements with an if-clause at the end. And it returns a list, not an iterable—with map, we would need to further call the list built-in to get a list.

But list comprehension can be worth avoiding because:

It leads to excessively complex syntax.

Other developers may be unfamiliar with the syntax and its quirks.

Other approaches, like for-loops and the map built-in, can accomplish the same sorts of tasks.

In my view, list comprehension is useful for creating lists with straightforward logic—like a list of 100 positive integers. But for complex things, or in cases where a function call is needed, other approaches like for-loops or map are a better choice. It is good to keep list comprehensions, should you decide to use them, fairly short and simple.