Why is del(ete) a statement instead of a method?

[Erik Max Francis]

Greg Brunet wrote:

> I'm just trying to learn Python, and one thing that struck me as odd
> was that to delete a specific list element, I need to use a statement
> instead of a method like I use for almost everything else I do on the
> list.  This seems a bit inconsistent.  Why wouldn't it be a method?

It's because del is used for a lot more than just removing elements from
lists.  It also removes keys from dictionaries, and can unbind
variables:

>>> x = 1
>>> del x
>>> x
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
NameError: name 'x' is not defined

-- 
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