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

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}