dict.clear() method in Python

The clear() method remove all elements from a dictionary, effectively making it an empty dictionary.

The syntax of clear() is as shown below:

d.clear()

Where d is the dictionary.

The clear() method does not take any parameters. It also does not return any value.

my_dict = {
    0: 'zero',
    1: 'one',
    2: 'two',
    3: 'three'
   }

#remove all elements
my_dict.clear()

#the dictionary is now empty
print(my_dict)

In the above example we removed all elements from d using the clear() method.

Note that the clear() method does not delete the dictionary, it simply removes all of its elements, turning it into an empty dict.  To entirely delete a dictionary from program's scope, you can use the del statement as shown below:

my_dict = {
    0: 'zero',
    1: 'one',
    2: 'two',
    3: 'three'
   }

#delete the dictionary
del my_dict

#the dictionary does not exist in memory
print(my_dict)

In the above example, a NameError is raised because the dictionary has been deleted from the program's namespace.