Remove multiple items from a Python list in just one statement

In Python, creating a new object is often better than modifying an existing one:

item_list = ['item', 5, 'foo', 3.14, True]
item_list = [e for e in item_list if e not in ('item', 5)]

Which is equivalent to:

item_list = ['item', 5, 'foo', 3.14, True]
new_list = []
for e in item_list:
    if e not in ('item', 5):
        new_list.append(e)
item_list = new_list

In case of a big list of filtered out values (here, ('item', 5) is a small set of elements), using a set is faster as the in operation is O(1) time complexity on average. It's also a good idea to build the iterable you're removing first, so that you're not creating it on every iteration of the list comprehension:

unwanted = {'item', 5}
item_list = [e for e in item_list if e not in unwanted]

A bloom filter is also a good solution if memory is not cheap.

You can do it in one line by converting your lists to sets and using set.difference:

item_list = ['item', 5, 'foo', 3.14, True]
list_to_remove = ['item', 5, 'foo']

final_list = list(set(item_list) - set(list_to_remove))

Would give you the following output:

final_list = [3.14, True]

Note: this will remove duplicates in your input list and the elements in the output can be in any order (because sets don't preserve order). It also requires all elements in both of your lists to be hashable.