Deleting List Elements

There are several ways to delete elements from a list. If you know a specific element  and index of element you want to delete you can use pop method:

>>> t = ['a', 'b', 'c']

>>> x = t.pop(1)

>>> print t

['a', 'c']

>>> print x

b

Pop method modifies the list and returns the element that was removed. If you don’t provide an index, it deletes and returns the last element.

>>> t = ['a', 'b', 'c']

>>> x = t.pop()

>>> print t

['a', 'b']

>>> print x

c

If you don’t need removed value but just want to delete removed value, you can use the del operator:

>>> t = ['a', 'b', 'c']

>>> del t[1]

>>> print t

['a', 'c']

If you know the element you want to remove (but not the index), you can use remove:

>>> t = ['a', 'b', 'c']

>>> t.remove('b')

>>> print t

['a', 'c']

The remove method return value is None. To remove more than one element, you can use del with a slice index:

>>> t = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'f']

>>> del t[1:]

>>> print t

['a']

Slice selects all the elements up to, but not including, the second index.