BUG: Appending empty list to DataFrame #28769

doc/source/whatsnew/v1.0.0.rst

@@ -362,6 +362,7 @@ Other
 - Bug in :meth:`Series.diff` where a boolean series would incorrectly raise a ``TypeError`` (:issue:`17294`)
 - :meth:`Series.append` will no longer raise a ``TypeError`` when passed a tuple of ``Series`` (:issue:`28410`)
 - Fix corrupted error message when calling ``pandas.libs._json.encode()`` on a 0d array (:issue:`18878`)
+- Bug in :meth:`DataFrame.append` that caused IndexError when appending with empty list (:issue: `28769`)
 
 .. _whatsnew_1000.contributors:
 

pandas/core/frame.py

@@ -7015,10 +7015,13 @@ def append(self, other, ignore_index=False, verify_integrity=False, sort=None):
             other = other._convert(datetime=True, timedelta=True)
             if not self.columns.equals(combined_columns):
                 self = self.reindex(columns=combined_columns)
-        elif isinstance(other, list) and not isinstance(other[0], DataFrame):
-            other = DataFrame(other)
-            if (self.columns.get_indexer(other.columns) >= 0).all():
-                other = other.reindex(columns=self.columns)
+        elif isinstance(other, list):
+            if not other:
+                pass
+            elif not isinstance(other[0], DataFrame):
+                other = DataFrame(other)
+                if (self.columns.get_indexer(other.columns) >= 0).all():
+                    other = other.reindex(columns=self.columns)
 
         from pandas.core.reshape.concat import concat
 

pandas/tests/frame/test_combine_concat.py

@@ -129,6 +129,17 @@ def test_concat_tuple_keys(self):
         )
         assert_frame_equal(results, expected)
 
+    def test_append_empty_list(self):
+        df = DataFrame()
+        result = df.append([])
+        expected = df.copy()
+        assert_frame_equal(result, expected)
+
+        df = DataFrame(np.random.randn(5, 4), columns=["foo", "bar", "baz", "qux"])
+        result = df.append([])
+        expected = df.copy()
+        assert_frame_equal(result, expected)
+
     def test_append_series_dict(self):
         df = DataFrame(np.random.randn(5, 4), columns=["foo", "bar", "baz", "qux"])