As said before I'm new to programming, and I need in depth explaination to understand everything the way I want to know it, call it a personality quirk ;p.
With pop() you remove the last element of a list and return its value: Now I know list is a bad name, but for the sake of arguement lets assume its not a built in sequence> >>>list = ['this', 'is', 'an', 'example'] >>>list.pop() 'example' >>>list ['this', 'is', 'an'] I understand all that. What I don't understand is why all the documentation I see says, "When removing a specific element from a list using pop() it must be in this format: list.pop([i]). At first I took that to mean that list.pop(i) would return some type of error, but it doesn't. I can't find any documentation saying that this rule that I keep reading about (again list.pop([i]) ) is the only format to use when removing a specific element because......with the explaination to follow. Now I'm not stupid enough to believe that I'm the first to try: >>>list = ['this', 'is', 'an', 'example'] >>>list.pop(1) and have it return the desired effect of: 'is' >>>list ['this', 'an', 'example'] I guess simplistically all I'm asking is: Is this just a community agreed upon rule for readability purposes? or Is it a rule that's in place for a reason I'll learn later on? Please keep in mind my intro sentence to this post. I would like a very detailed explaination, or at least a link to a very detailed expression. ONLY....of course....if the explaination isn't, well it just is because we all agreed to use it that way. That explaination I'll understand and except, but with a bit of dissatisfaction. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list