Best method to delete an item from a dict

Most of the time the most useful one actually is:

d.pop("keyC", None)

which removes the key from the dict, but does not raise a KeyError if it didn't exist.

The expression also conveniently returns the value under the key, or None if there wasn't one.

pop returns the value of deleted key.
Basically, d.pop(key) evaluates as x = d[key]; del d[key]; return x.

• Use pop when you need to know the value of deleted key
• Use del otherwise

• Use d.pop if you want to capture the removed item, like in item = d.pop("keyA").

• Use del if you want to delete an item from a dictionary.

• If you want to delete, suppressing an error if the key isn't in the dictionary: if thekey in thedict: del thedict[thekey]