Collections and Builtin: Rename `list_` argument to `list` and `time_` argument to `time`

Author: pekkaklarckCreated Aug 24, 2026Updated Aug 31, 2026
Labelspriority: mediumbackwards incompatibleeffort: small

List related keywords in the Collections library use list_ as the name of the argument containing the list to validate or modify. Similarly, the Sleep keyword in Builtin has argument time_. The motivation has been to avoid a name clash with Python's built-in list class and the time module, respectively. That's understandable, but these names are still odd. There would also be no real problems with using names list and time.

We've used these names "forever", but the situation got a bit worse in RF 7.5 when explicit argument documentation was added as part of #5709. We considered changing the names at the same time, but due to backwards compatibility reasons decided to do it in a major release instead. We also plan to add a note about names being changed to the docs so users have time to react if needed.

As mentioned above, the change is backwards incompatible, but normal usages like these aren't affected:

Log List    ${mylist}
Sleep    10 seconds

Problems arise if the name argument syntax is used like:

Log List    list_=${mylist}
Sleep    time_=10 seconds

Because list_ and time_ are both used only as the first argument, there is generally no need to use the named argument syntax and thus usages like above ought to be rare.

Source: robotframework/robotframework