del is the equivalent of "unset" in many languages and as a cross reference point moving from another language to python.. people tend to look for commands that do the same thing that they used to do in their first language... also setting a var to "" or none doesn't really remove the var from scope..it just empties its value the name of the var itself would still be stored in memory...why?!? in a memory intensive script..keeping trash behind its just a no no and anyways...every language out there has some form of an "unset/delete" var function..why not python?

在以上回答的基础上补充几点: 德尔x

x的定义表示r -> o(一个引用r指向一个对象o)，但del x改变的是r而不是o。这是一个对对象的引用(指针)的操作，而不是与x相关的对象。区分r和o是这里的关键。

It removes it from locals(). Removes it from globals() if x belongs there. Removes it from the stack frame (removes the reference physically from it, but the object itself resides in object pool and not in the stack frame). Removes it from the current scope. It is very useful to limit the span of definition of a local variable, which otherwise can cause problems. It is more about declaration of the name rather than definition of content. It affects where x belongs to, not where x points to. The only physical change in memory is this. For example if x is in a dictionary or list, it (as a reference) is removed from there(and not necessarily from the object pool). In this example, the dictionary it belongs is the stack frame (locals()), which overlaps with globals().

作为del可以用来做什么的例子，我发现它在这样的情况下很有用:

def f(a, b, c=3):
    return '{} {} {}'.format(a, b, c)

def g(**kwargs):
    if 'c' in kwargs and kwargs['c'] is None:
        del kwargs['c']

    return f(**kwargs)

# g(a=1, b=2, c=None) === '1 2 3'
# g(a=1, b=2) === '1 2 3'
# g(a=1, b=2, c=4) === '1 2 4'

这两个函数可以在不同的包/模块中，程序员不需要知道f中的参数c实际上有什么默认值。因此，通过将kwargs与del结合使用，您可以将其设置为None(或者在这种情况下也可以保留它)，从而说“I want the default value on c”。

你也可以这样做:

def g(a, b, c=None):
    kwargs = {'a': a,
              'b': b}
    if c is not None:
        kwargs['c'] = c

    return f(**kwargs)

然而，我发现前面的例子更加DRY和优雅。

我想详细说明公认的答案，以强调将变量设置为None与使用del删除变量之间的细微差别:

给定变量foo = 'bar'，函数定义如下:

def test_var(var):
    if var:
        print('variable tested true')
    else:
        print('variable tested false')

一旦初始声明，test_var(foo)产生的变量测试为true。

现在试一试:

foo = None
test_var(foo)

它产生的变量测试为假。

将这种行为与以下行为进行对比:

del foo
test_var(foo)

现在会引发NameError: name 'foo'没有定义。

del所做的部分(来自Python语言参考):

删除名称将从本地或全局名称空间删除该名称的绑定

将None赋值给名称不会删除名称与名称空间的绑定。

(我想关于移除名称绑定是否真的有用可能会有一些争论，但这是另一个问题。)

Del经常出现在__init__.py文件中。任何在__init__.py文件中定义的全局变量都将自动“导出”(它将包含在from模块import *中)。避免这种情况的一种方法是定义__all__，但这可能会很混乱，并不是每个人都使用它。

例如，如果你在__init__.py中有这样的代码

import sys
if sys.version_info < (3,):
    print("Python 2 not supported")

然后您的模块将导出sys名称。你应该写

import sys
if sys.version_info < (3,):
    print("Python 2 not supported")

del sys