Remove dictionary from list

Question

If I have a list of dictionaries, say:

[{\'id\': 1, \'name\': \'paul\'},
 {\'id\': 2, \'name\': \'john\'}]

and I would like to remove the d

Answer 1

You could try something along the following lines:

def destructively_remove_if(predicate, list):
      for k in xrange(len(list)):
          if predicate(list[k]):
              del list[k]
              break
      return list

  list = [
      { 'id': 1, 'name': 'John' },
      { 'id': 2, 'name': 'Karl' },
      { 'id': 3, 'name': 'Desdemona' } 
  ]

  print "Before:", list
  destructively_remove_if(lambda p: p["id"] == 2, list)
  print "After:", list

Unless you build something akin to an index over your data, I don't think that you can do better than doing a brute-force "table scan" over the entire list. If your data is sorted by the key you are using, you might be able to employ the bisect module to find the object you are looking for somewhat faster.