What is the pop function?

The method pop() removes and returns the last element from a list. There is an optional parameter which is the index of the element to be removed from the list. If no index is specified, a.pop() removes and returns the last item in the list. If the index passed to the pop() method is not in the range, it throws IndexError: pop index out of range exception.

Example Usage

cities = ['New York', 'Dallas', 'San Antonio', 'Houston', 'San Francisco'];

print "City popped is : ", cities.pop()
print "City at index 2 is  : ", cities.pop(2)

Output

City popped is :  San Francisco
City at index 2 is  :  San Antonio

Basic Stack Functionality

The pop() method is often used in conjunction with append() to implement basic stack functionality in a Python application.

stack = []

for i in range(5):
    stack.append(i)

while len(stack):
    print(stack.pop())

More Information:

The official documentation for pop() can be found here