Delete element in an array for julia

user2820579 picture user2820579 · Feb 9, 2016 · Viewed 28.6k times · Source

I've been wandering for a while in the docs and in forums and I haven't found a built in method/function to do the simple task of deleting an element in an array. Is there such built-in function?

I am asking for the equivalent of python's list.remove(x).

Here's an example of naively picking a function from the box:

julia> a=Any["D","A","s","t"]
julia> pop!(a, "s")
ERROR: MethodError: `pop!` has no method matching       
pop!(::Array{Any,1},     ::ASCIIString)
Closest candidates are:
  pop!(::Array{T,1})
  pop!(::ObjectIdDict, ::ANY, ::ANY)
  pop!(::ObjectIdDict, ::ANY)
  ...

Here mentions to use deleteat!, but also doesn't work:

julia> deleteat!(a, "s")
ERROR: MethodError: `-` has no method matching -(::Int64, ::Char)
Closest candidates are:
  -(::Int64)
  -(::Int64, ::Int64)
  -(::Real, ::Complex{T<:Real})
  ...

 in deleteat! at array.jl:621

Answer

Dan Getz picture Dan Getz · Feb 9, 2016

You can also go with filter!:

a = Any["D", "A", "s", "t"]
filter!(e->e≠"s",a)
println(a)

gives:

Any["D","A","t"]

This allows to delete several values at once, as in:

filter!(e->e∉["s","A"],a)

Note 1: In Julia 0.5, anonymous functions are much faster and the little penalty felt in 0.4 is not an issue anymore :-) .

Note 2: Code above uses unicode operators. With normal operators: is != and e∉[a,b] is !(e in [a,b])