How to remove items from a list while iterating?

Question

I'm iterating over a list of tuples in Python, and am attempting to remove them if they meet certain criteria.

for tup in somelist:
    if determine(tup):
         code_to_remove_tup

What should I use in place of code_to_remove_tup? I can't figure out how to remove the item in this fashion.

Answer 1

You can use a list comprehension to create a new list containing only the elements you don't want to remove:

somelist = [x for x in somelist if not determine(x)]

Or, by assigning to the slice somelist[:], you can mutate the existing list to contain only the items you want:

somelist[:] = [x for x in somelist if not determine(x)]

This approach could be useful if there are other references to somelist that need to reflect the changes.

Instead of a comprehension, you could also use itertools. In Python 2:

from itertools import ifilterfalse
somelist[:] = ifilterfalse(determine, somelist)

Or in Python 3:

from itertools import filterfalse
somelist[:] = filterfalse(determine, somelist)