Python - List delete operations

Introduction

Because lists are mutable, you can use the del statement to delete an item or section in place:

Demo

L = ['test', 'eggs', 'ham', 'toast'] 
del L[0]                         # Delete one item 
print( L )
del L[1:]                        # Delete an entire section 
print( L )                               # Same as L[1:] = []
#   ww w. ja  v a  2  s  .  co m

Result

Because slice assignment is a deletion plus an insertion, you can delete a section of a list by assigning an empty list to a slice (L[i:j]=[]).

Python deletes the slice named on the left, and then inserts nothing.

Assigning an empty list to an index just stores a reference to the empty list object in the specified slot, rather than deleting an item:

Demo

L = ['Already', 'got', 'one'] 
L[1:] = [] # from  w ww.  j  av a2 s  . co m
print( L )
L[0] = [] 
print( L )

Result