Delete an element from a dictionary

Question

Is there a way to delete an item from a dictionary in Python?

Additionally, how can I delete an item from a dictionary to return a copy (i.e., not modifying the original)?

Answer 1

I think your solution is best way to do it. But if you want another solution, you can create a new dictionary with using the keys from old dictionary without including your specified key, like this:

>>> a
{0: 'zero', 1: 'one', 2: 'two', 3: 'three'}
>>> {i:a[i] for i in a if i!=0}
{1: 'one', 2: 'two', 3: 'three'}

Answer 2

The del statement removes an element:

del d[key]

However, this mutates the existing dictionary so the contents of the dictionary changes for anybody else who has a reference to the same instance. To return a new dictionary, make a copy of the dictionary:

def removekey(d, key):
    r = dict(d)
    del r[key]
    return r

The dict() constructor makes a shallow copy. To make a deep copy, see the copy module.

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Note that making a copy for every dict del/assignment/etc. means you're going from constant time to linear time, and also using linear space. For small dicts, this is not a problem. But if you're planning to make lots of copies of large dicts, you probably want a different data structure, like a HAMT (as described in this answer).