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.