Deleting item of list while visting list...

[aberry]

I have strange issue when deleting element of list which I'm browsing. Here is the code , please have a look.

>>> li = ['mike','anil','jassi']
>>> for name in li:
    print name
 
mike
anil
jassi
>>> for name in li:
    print name
    li.remove(name)
 
mike
jassi
>>> li
['anil']
 

It seems strange, In my project , I have global list , while going thro' each item , I have to delete item upon certain condition. But I'm not getting result as expected whenever it delete element. It seems as upon deletion, List length get decreased and it is causing this behavior (might be As Designed from python or I can use list as this way)

If someone know details behind this behavior of list , pls share (However I got workaround for this issue by using another list and putting element and then deleting 1 by 1 :))

thanks,
Anil

[bvdet]

Python is doing exactly what you are telling it to do. The first iteration, 'mike' (element 0) is printed, then deleted. The next iteration, element 1 (now 'jassi') is printed, then deleted. The iteration is done at this point.

[boxfish]

As bvdet said, Python is not adjusting the indexes to account for deleted items. When you delete an item from the list, all the items after it move down one index. Your loop ends up skipping every other element. If you want delete all the items, you can use

for i in xrange(len(li)):
    print li[0]
    del li[0]

I hope this is helpful.