Removing multiple keys from a dictionary safely

Using dict.pop:

d = {'some': 'data'}
entries_to_remove = ('any', 'iterable')
for k in entries_to_remove:
    d.pop(k, None)

Using Dict Comprehensions

final_dict = {key: value for key, value in d.items() if key not in [key1, key2]}

where key1 and key2 are to be removed.

In the example below, keys "b" and "c" are to be removed & it's kept in a keys list.

>>> a
{'a': 1, 'c': 3, 'b': 2, 'd': 4}
>>> keys = ["b", "c"]
>>> print {key: a[key] for key in a if key not in keys}
{'a': 1, 'd': 4}
>>> 

Why not like this:

entries = ('a', 'b', 'c')
the_dict = {'b': 'foo'}

def entries_to_remove(entries, the_dict):
    for key in entries:
        if key in the_dict:
            del the_dict[key]

A more compact version was provided by mattbornski using dict.pop()

If you also need to retrieve the values for the keys you are removing, this would be a pretty good way to do it:

values_removed = [d.pop(k, None) for k in entities_to_remove]

You could of course still do this just for the removal of the keys from d, but you would be unnecessarily creating the list of values with the list comprehension. It is also a little unclear to use a list comprehension just for the function's side effect.