How to remove an element from a list in Python

In this article, we will go through the methods for removing an element from a list. We will discuss remove() and pop() methods.

Method 1: remove()

To remove an element from a list, you can use the built-in list function remove().

• The remove() method removes the first matching element (which is passed as an argument) from the list.

• Syntax: listname.remove(element)

• The remove() method takes a single element as an argument and removes it from the list.

• If the element doesn’t exist, it throws ValueError: list.remove(x): x not in list exception

• The remove() doesn’t return any value.

Example:

#initial list
colors = ['red', 'green', 'blue', 'yellow', 'white']
print("Initial list ", colors)
#removing the element 'yellow'
colors.remove('yellow')
print ("List after removal: ", colors)

Output:

Initial list  ['red', 'green', 'blue', 'yellow', 'white']
List after removal:  ['red', 'green', 'blue', 'white']

Method 2: pop()

• The pop() method removes the item at the given index from the list and returns the removed item

• Syntax: listname.pop(index)

• The pop() method takes a single argument. This argument is optional. If the index is given, then this function will pop out the last item on the list. [The default value is set to -1]

• If the index is out of range, it throws  IndexError: pop index out of range exception.

Example:

#initial list
colors = ['red', 'green', 'blue', 'yellow', 'white']
print("Initial list ", colors)
#removing the element 'yellow'
print ("Removed element is ", colors.pop(2))
print ("List after removal: ", colors)

Output:

Initial list  ['red', 'green', 'blue', 'yellow', 'white']
Removed element is  blue
List after removal:  ['red', 'green', 'yellow', 'white']