efficient circular buffer?

I would use collections.deque with a maxlen arg

>>> import collections
>>> d = collections.deque(maxlen=10)
>>> d
deque([], maxlen=10)
>>> for i in xrange(20):
...     d.append(i)
... 
>>> d
deque([10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19], maxlen=10)

There is a recipe in the docs for deque that is similar to what you want. My assertion that it's the most efficient rests entirely on the fact that it's implemented in C by an incredibly skilled crew that is in the habit of cranking out top notch code.

Based on MoonCactus's answer, here is a circularlist class. The difference with his version is that here c[0] will always give the oldest-appended element, c[-1] the latest-appended element, c[-2] the penultimate... This is more natural for applications.

c = circularlist(4)
c.append(1); print(c, c[0], c[-1])    #[1] (1/4 items)              1  1
c.append(2); print(c, c[0], c[-1])    #[1, 2] (2/4 items)           1  2
c.append(3); print(c, c[0], c[-1])    #[1, 2, 3] (3/4 items)        1  3
c.append(8); print(c, c[0], c[-1])    #[1, 2, 3, 8] (4/4 items)     1  8
c.append(10); print(c, c[0], c[-1])   #[2, 3, 8, 10] (4/4 items)    2  10
c.append(11); print(c, c[0], c[-1])   #[3, 8, 10, 11] (4/4 items)   3  11
d = circularlist(4, [1, 2, 3, 4, 5])  #[2, 3, 4, 5]

Class:

class circularlist(object):
    def __init__(self, size, data = []):
        """Initialization"""
        self.index = 0
        self.size = size
        self._data = list(data)[-size:]

    def append(self, value):
        """Append an element"""
        if len(self._data) == self.size:
            self._data[self.index] = value
        else:
            self._data.append(value)
        self.index = (self.index + 1) % self.size

    def __getitem__(self, key):
        """Get element by index, relative to the current index"""
        if len(self._data) == self.size:
            return(self._data[(key + self.index) % self.size])
        else:
            return(self._data[key])

    def __repr__(self):
        """Return string representation"""
        return (self._data[self.index:] + self._data[:self.index]).__repr__() + ' (' + str(len(self._data))+'/{} items)'.format(self.size)

popping from the head of a list causes the whole list to be copied, so is inefficient

You should instead use a list/array of fixed size and an index which moves through the buffer as you add/remove items

Although there are already a great number of great answers here, I could not find any direct comparison of timings for the options mentioned. Therefore, please find my humble attempt at a comparison below.

For testing purposes only, the class can switch between a list-based buffer, a collections.deque-based buffer, and a Numpy.roll-based buffer.

Note that the update method adds only one value at a time, to keep it simple.

import numpy
import timeit
import collections


class CircularBuffer(object):
    buffer_methods = ('list', 'deque', 'roll')

    def __init__(self, buffer_size, buffer_method):
        self.content = None
        self.size = buffer_size
        self.method = buffer_method

    def update(self, scalar):
        if self.method == self.buffer_methods[0]:
            # Use list
            try:
                self.content.append(scalar)
                self.content.pop(0)
            except AttributeError:
                self.content = [0.] * self.size
        elif self.method == self.buffer_methods[1]:
            # Use collections.deque
            try:
                self.content.append(scalar)
            except AttributeError:
                self.content = collections.deque([0.] * self.size,
                                                 maxlen=self.size)
        elif self.method == self.buffer_methods[2]:
            # Use Numpy.roll
            try:
                self.content = numpy.roll(self.content, -1)
                self.content[-1] = scalar
            except IndexError:
                self.content = numpy.zeros(self.size, dtype=float)

# Testing and Timing
circular_buffer_size = 100
circular_buffers = [CircularBuffer(buffer_size=circular_buffer_size,
                                   buffer_method=method)
                    for method in CircularBuffer.buffer_methods]
timeit_iterations = 1e4
timeit_setup = 'from __main__ import circular_buffers'
timeit_results = []
for i, cb in enumerate(circular_buffers):
    # We add a convenient number of convenient values (see equality test below)
    code = '[circular_buffers[{}].update(float(j)) for j in range({})]'.format(
        i, circular_buffer_size)
    # Testing
    eval(code)
    buffer_content = [item for item in cb.content]
    assert buffer_content == range(circular_buffer_size)
    # Timing
    timeit_results.append(
        timeit.timeit(code, setup=timeit_setup, number=int(timeit_iterations)))
    print '{}: total {:.2f}s ({:.2f}ms per iteration)'.format(
        cb.method, timeit_results[-1],
        timeit_results[-1] / timeit_iterations * 1e3)

On my system this yields:

list:  total 1.06s (0.11ms per iteration)
deque: total 0.87s (0.09ms per iteration)
roll:  total 6.27s (0.63ms per iteration)