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Consider the following…
In [1]: del []
In [2]: del {}
File "<ipython-input-2-24ce3265f213>", line 1
SyntaxError: can't delete literal
In [3]: del ""
File "<ipython-input-3-95fcb133aa75>", line 1
SyntaxError: can't delete literal
In [4]: del ["A"]
File "<ipython-input-5-d41e712d0c77>", line 1
SyntaxError: can't delete literal
What is special about []? I would expect this to raise a SyntaxError too. Why doesn’t it? I’ve observed this behavior in Python2 and Python3.
The
delstatement syntax allows for atarget_list, and that includes a list or tuple of variable names.It is intended for deleting several names at once:
which is the equivalent of:
or
But python does not enforce the list to actually have any elements.
The expression
on the other hand is a syntax error;
()is seen as a literal empty tuple in that case.