Remove List Items

There are various methods to remove items from the list: pop(), remove(), del(), clear()

 

pop():

This method removes the last item of the list if no index is provided. If an index is provided, then it removes item at that specified index.

Example 1:

colors = ["Red", "Green", "Blue", "Yellow", "Green"]
colors.pop()        #removes the last item of the list
print(colors)

Output:

['Red', 'Green', 'Blue', 'Yellow']

 

Example 2:

colors = ["Red", "Green", "Blue", "Yellow", "Green"]
colors.pop(1)       #removes item at index 1
print(colors)

Output:

['Red', 'Blue', 'Yellow', 'Green']

 

What if you want to remove a specific item from the list?

 

remove():

This method removes specific item from the list.

Example:

colors = ["voilet", "indigo", "blue", "green", "yellow"]
colors.remove("blue")
print(colors)

Output:

['voilet', 'indigo', 'green', 'yellow']

 

del:

del is not a method, rather it is a keyword which deletes item at specific from the list, or deletes the list entirely.

Example 1:

colors = ["voilet", "indigo", "blue", "green", "yellow"]
del colors[3]
print(colors)

Output:

['voilet', 'indigo', 'blue', 'yellow']

 

Example 2:

colors = ["voilet", "indigo", "blue", "green", "yellow"]
del colors
print(colors)

Output:

NameError: name 'colors' is not defined 

We get an error because our entire list has been deleted and there is no variable called colors which contains a list.

 

What if we don’t want to delete the entire list, we just want to delete all items within that list?

 

clear():

This method clears all items in the list and prints an empty list.

Example:

colors = ["voilet", "indigo", "blue", "green", "yellow"]
colors.clear()
print(colors)

Output:

[]