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

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.