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So far while working with arrays, we've learned how to add and access the items inside. Now it's time to learn how to remove items in arrays.
Code Samples
Let's assume we have the following array:
array = ["milk", "eggs", "bread", "ice cream", "carrots", "potatoes"]
To access and remove the last item in the array, we can use the pop
method:
last_item = array.pop
The last_item
variable will now contain the string potatoes
. The array now looks like this:
["milk", "eggs", "bread", "ice cream", "carrots"]
To access and remove the first item in the array, we use the shift
method:
first_item = array.shift
The first_item
variable now contains the string milk
. The array now looks like this:
[ "eggs", "bread", "ice cream", "carrots" ]
We can use the drop
method to take out a number of items from an array. The drop
method's argument is the number of items to remove from the front of the array.
ice_cream_carrots = array.drop(2)
Similar to the unshift
method, which adds to the beginning of an array, the shift
method removes from the beginning of an array:
item = array.shift
The item
variable now contains the string "eggs" and our array
looks like this:
[ "bread", "ice cream", "carrots" ]
Let's add "potatoes" to the end of our array:
array.push("potatoes")
The array
now contains:
["bread", "ice cream", "carrots", "potatoes"]
The slice
method takes two arguments and removes and returns items from the array. The first argument is the index in the array, and the second argument is the number of items:
first_three_items = array.slice(0, 3)
Now, the first_three_items
variable contains the following array:
["bread", "ice cream", "carrots"]
The array
variable is now a single element:
["potatoes"]
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