Remove Last Element From Tuple in Python

In this tutorial, we will look at how to remove the last element from a tuple in Python with the help of some examples.

How to remove the last element from a tuple?

Tuples are immutable. That is, they cannot be altered after creating them. You can, however, create a copy of the tuple with the last element removed in Python.

You can use a slice operation to slice only the part of the tuple you want. Let’s look at how to do this with the help of some examples.

Use slice to remove the last element

Slice the tuple from the start to the last element (but not including the last element) and then assign the resulting tuple to the original tuple variable.

# create a tuple
t = (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
# remove last element
last_element_index = len(t)-1
t = t[:last_element_index]
print(t)

Output:

(1, 2, 3, 4)

The tuple now has the last element removed.

You can also use negative indexing, for example, -1 to represent the index of the last element. For example –

# create a tuple
t = (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
# remove last element
t = t[:-1]
print(t)

Output:

(1, 2, 3, 4)

You can see that the resulting tuple does not have the last element from the original tuple.

Please note that we are not modifying the original tuple. Instead, we are creating a new tuple with the last element removed and then assigning it back to the variable storing the original tuple.

Use Lists Instead

If you want to store an ordered collection of objects and are expecting to make some changes to this collection (for example, adding, removing, replacing elements, etc.), you should prefer using lists that are much more flexible than tuples.

For example, you can use the list pop() function to remove an element from a list using its index.

# create a list
ls = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
# remove last element
ls.pop(-1)
print(ls)

Output:

[1, 2, 3, 4]

Here, we used the list pop() function to remove the last element from a list. For more, refer to our detailed tutorial on removing the last element from a list in Python.

You might also be interested in –

• Count Frequency of Element in a Tuple in Python
• Sort a Tuple in Python – With Examples