"del" Statement - Delete Statement

Python Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟"del" Statement - Delete Statement

This section provides a quick introduction of 'del' (delete) statement, which is a simple statement that deletes the definitions of given targets and their associated object references.

What Is "del" - Delete Statement? A "del", or delete, statement is a simple statement that deletes the definitions of given targets and their associated object references.

Note that a delete statement will not delete the object referenced by the target. It is the job of the Python system to manage dead objects.

Delete statements have several forms:

1. Delete Variable - It deletes a single variable target using this syntax:

del variable_name

# example code
# define a variable with an assignment statement
>>> x = "apple"
>>> x
'apple'

# delete the variable
>>> del x
>>> x
NameError: name 'x' is not defined

2. Delete Attribute - It deletes an attribute of a target object using this syntax:

del target_object.attribute_name

# example code
>>> import sys

# define an attribute with an assignment statement
>>> sys.x = "apple"
>>> sys.x
'apple'

# delete the attribute
>>> del sys.x
>>> sys.x
AttributeError: module 'sys' has no attribute 'x'

3. Subscription Assignment - It assigns a single object to an item (indexed or named) of a target object using these syntaxes:

del target_object[index]
del target_object[key_name]

# example code
>>> fruits = list(["apple", "orange"])
>>> del fruits[0]
>>> fruits
['orange']

>>> prices = dict(apple=0.99, orange=1.19)
>>> del prices["apple"]
>>> prices
{'orange': 1.19}

4. Delete Slice - It deletes a slice of a target object using this syntax:

del target_object[low:high]

# example code
>>> feet = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90]
>>> del feet[2:4]
>>> feet
[10, 20, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90]

5. Bulk Delete - It deletes each target in a given sequence from left to right using one of these syntaxes:

del  target_1, target_2, ...,
del (target_1, target_2, ...,)
del [target_1, target_2, ...,]

# example code

>>> fruits = ["apple", "banana", "cherry", "strawberry", "raspberry"]
>>> a, b, c, s, r = fruits
>>> del c, s

>>> a, b, c, s, r = fruits
>>> del (c, s)

>>> a, b, c, s, r = fruits
>>> del [c, s]

>>> del fruits