What is difference between pop and del?

Question

pop and del metods are same or not in python.

Answer 1

Apart from the slight difference in syntax, they do work differently. del() removes a list element from memory. pop(), however, returns the item that you are removing, allowing you to use it again if you wish.

Eg:

a = [1,2,3]
b = [4,5,6]

Say you wanted to take out the first item of list 'b' and add it to the end of list 'a'. Using pop, this can be done simply:

a.append(b.pop(0))

b.pop(0) removes the first list item in b, and returns it so that a.append can use it. There is no simple way to do this (that I know of) using del. So:

del(b[0]) removes 4 from b, but to add it to a, it would need to be done manually, i.e. a.append(4).

Hope this makes sense.