Let’s run some time tests* with timeit.timeit:
>>> from timeit import timeit
>>>
>>> # Test 1
>>> test = """
... my_list = []
... for i in xrange(50):
... my_list.append(0)
... """
>>> timeit(test)
22.384258893239178
>>>
>>> # Test 2
>>> test = """
... my_list = []
... for i in xrange(50):
... my_list += [0]
... """
>>> timeit(test)
34.494779364416445
>>>
>>> # Test 3
>>> test = "my_list = [0 for i in xrange(50)]"
>>> timeit(test)
9.490926919482774
>>>
>>> # Test 4
>>> test = "my_list = [0] * 50"
>>> timeit(test)
1.5340533503559755
>>>
As you can see above, the last method is the fastest by far.
However, it should only be used with immutable items (such as integers). This is because it will create a list with references to the same item.
Below is a demonstration:
>>> lst = [[]] * 3
>>> lst
[[], [], []]
>>> # The ids of the items in `lst` are the same
>>> id(lst[0])
28734408
>>> id(lst[1])
28734408
>>> id(lst[2])
28734408
>>>
This behavior is very often undesirable and can lead to bugs in the code.
If you have mutable items (such as lists), then you should use the still very fast list comprehension:
>>> lst = [[] for _ in xrange(3)]
>>> lst
[[], [], []]
>>> # The ids of the items in `lst` are different
>>> id(lst[0])
28796688
>>> id(lst[1])
28796648
>>> id(lst[2])
28736168
>>>
*Note: In all of the tests, I replaced range with xrange. Since the latter returns an iterator, it should always be faster than the former.