How do you remove multiple items from a list in Python?

To remove more than one item from a list, we can use various ways as discussed in this article. Let’s say have the following input List −

["David","Jacob", "Harry", "Mark", "Anthony", "Steve", "Chris"]

Following is the output when multiple elements “David” and “Harry” are removed −

["Jacob", "Mark", "Anthony", "Steve", "Chris"]

Remove multiple items from a List

Example

To remove multiple items from a List, use the del keyword. The del allows you to add the items you want to delete in a range using square brackets:

# Creating a List
mylist = ["David","Jacob", "Harry", "Mark", "Anthony", "Steve", "Chris"]

# Displaying the List
print("List = ",mylist)

# Remove multiple items from a list using del keyword
del mylist[2:5]

# Display the updated list
print("Updated List = ",list(mylist))

Output

List =  ['David', 'Jacob', 'Harry', 'Mark', 'Anthony', 'Steve', 'Chris']
Updated List =  ['David', 'Jacob', 'Steve', 'Chris']

Remove multiple items from a list using List Comprehension

Example

To remove multiple items from a List, we can also list comprehension. In this, first we will set the elements to be deleted and then add it to the List Comprehension for deleting them −

# Creating a List
mylist = ["David","Jacob", "Harry", "Mark", "Anthony", "Steve", "Chris"]

# Displaying the List
print("List = ",mylist)

# Remove the following multiple items
delItems = {"David","Anthony","Chris"}

# List Comprehension to delete multiple items
resList = [i for i in mylist if i not in delItems]

# Display the updated list
print("Updated List = ",resList)

Output

List =  ['David', 'Jacob', 'Harry', 'Mark', 'Anthony', 'Steve', 'Chris']
Updated List =  ['Jacob', 'Harry', 'Mark', 'Steve']

Remove multiple items from a list using remove()

Example

In this example, we will remove multiple items from the List. The items getting removed are divisible by 5 −

# Creating a List
mylist = [2, 7, 10, 14, 20, 25, 33, 38, 43]

# Displaying the List
print("List = ",mylist)

# Delete multiple items (divisible by 5)
for i in list(mylist):
   if i % 5 == 0:
      mylist.remove(i)

# Display the updated list
print("Updated List = ",mylist)

Output

List =  [2, 7, 10, 14, 20, 25, 33, 38, 43]
Updated List =  [2, 7, 14, 33, 38, 43]

Remove multiple items from a list with index

Example

Here, we will be given with the index of the items to be removed −

# Creating a List
mylist = ["David","Jacob", "Harry", "Mark", "Anthony", "Steve", "Chris"]

# Displaying the List
print("List = ",mylist)

# Remove the items at the following indexes
delItemsIndex = [1, 4]

# List Comprehension to delete multiple items
for i in sorted(delItemsIndex, reverse = True):
   del mylist[i]

# Display the updated list
print("Updated List = ",mylist)

Output

List =  ['David', 'Jacob', 'Harry', 'Mark', 'Anthony', 'Steve', 'Chris']
Updated List =  ['David', 'Harry', 'Mark', 'Steve', 'Chris']