How to remove a key from a Python dictionary?

Question

When deleting a key from a dictionary, I use:

if \'key\' in my_dict:
    del my_dict[\'key\']

Is there a one line way of doing this?

Answer 1

del my_dict[key] is slightly faster than my_dict.pop(key) for removing a key from a dictionary when the key exists

>>> import timeit
>>> setup = "d = {i: i for i in range(100000)}"

>>> timeit.timeit("del d[3]", setup=setup, number=1)
1.79e-06
>>> timeit.timeit("d.pop(3)", setup=setup, number=1)
2.09e-06
>>> timeit.timeit("d2 = {key: val for key, val in d.items() if key != 3}", setup=setup, number=1)
0.00786

But when the key doesn't exist if key in my_dict: del my_dict[key] is slightly faster than my_dict.pop(key, None). Both are at least three times faster than del in a try/except statement:

>>> timeit.timeit("if 'missing key' in d: del d['missing key']", setup=setup)
0.0229
>>> timeit.timeit("d.pop('missing key', None)", setup=setup)
0.0426
>>> try_except = """
... try:
...     del d['missing key']
... except KeyError:
...     pass
... """
>>> timeit.timeit(try_except, setup=setup)
0.133

Answer 2

Specifically to answer "is there a one line way of doing this?"

if 'key' in my_dict: del my_dict['key']

...well, you asked ;-)

You should consider, though, that this way of deleting an object from a dict is not atomic—it is possible that 'key' may be in my_dict during the if statement, but may be deleted before del is executed, in which case del will fail with a KeyError. Given this, it would be safest to either use dict.pop or something along the lines of

try:
    del my_dict['key']
except KeyError:
    pass

which, of course, is definitely not a one-liner.

Answer 3

You can use exception handling if you want to be very verbose:

try: 
    del dict[key]

except KeyError: pass

This is slower, however, than the pop() method, if the key doesn't exist.

my_dict.pop('key', None)

It won't matter for a few keys, but if you're doing this repeatedly, then the latter method is a better bet.

The fastest approach is this:

if 'key' in dict: 
    del myDict['key']

But this method is dangerous because if 'key' is removed in between the two lines, a KeyError will be raised.

Answer 4

Another way is by Using items() + dict comprehension

items() coupled with dict comprehension can also help us achieve task of key-value pair deletion but, it has drawback of not being an inplace dict technique. Actually a new dict if created except for the key we don’t wish to include.

test_dict = {"sai" : 22, "kiran" : 21, "vinod" : 21, "sangam" : 21} 

# Printing dictionary before removal 
print ("dictionary before performing remove is : " + str(test_dict)) 

# Using items() + dict comprehension to remove a dict. pair 
# removes  vinod
new_dict = {key:val for key, val in test_dict.items() if key != 'vinod'} 

# Printing dictionary after removal 
print ("dictionary after remove is : " + str(new_dict)) 

Output:

dictionary before performing remove is : {'sai': 22, 'kiran': 21, 'vinod': 21, 'sangam': 21}
dictionary after remove is : {'sai': 22, 'kiran': 21, 'sangam': 21}

Answer 5

You can use a dictionary comprehension to create a new dictionary with that key removed:

>>> my_dict = {k: v for k, v in my_dict.items() if k != 'key'}

You can delete by conditions. No error if key doesn't exist.

Answer 6

It took me some time to figure out what exactly my_dict.pop("key", None) is doing. So I'll add this as an answer to save others Googling time:

pop(key[, default])

If key is in the dictionary, remove it and return its value, else return default. If default is not given and key is not in the dictionary, a KeyError is raised.

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