Remove item from array in Javascript

In this post, we are going to learn to remove one or multiple elements from an array using Javascript.

const myArray = [2, 5, 9];

const removeIndex = 2;

myArray.splice(removeIndex, 1);

console.log(myArray);

Output

[2,5]

Remove array items using .splice() function

We can easily remove array elements using Array.splice() function in javascript. It takes two arguments as a parameter. The first argument is the index or position of the element in the array from where you want to start removing the element. The second argument is the number of items that you want to remove.

Syntax

Array.splice(item_index, number_of_items)

Code Example 1 - Remove a single element

let arr = ["a", "b", "c", "d", "e"];

arr.splice(2, 1);

console.log(arr);

Output

["a","b","d","e"]

Live Demo for above code example

Code Example 2 - Remove multiple items using splice() function

let arr = ["a", "b", "c", "d", "e"];

arr.splice(2, 3);

console.log(arr);

Output

["a","b"]

We are removing 3 items from an array using the above code example.

Live Demo for above code example

Get item index and remove it from the array

We are using the indexOf() function here to get the index of the item from the array and the splice() function to remove that item.

const arr = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'];

const item_index = arr.indexOf('c');

if (item_index > -1) {
    arr.splice(item_index, 1);
}

console.log(arr);

Output

["a","b","d","e"]

Live demo of the above code

Remove first item from an array - shift() function

You can use the shift() function in Javascript to delete the very first element from an array. The Array.shift() function returns the first element from the array along with deleting the element.

Syntax

Array.shift()

Code example

let arr = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50];

arr.shift();

console.log(arr);

Output

[20,30,40,50]

Live Demo of shift() function

Remove last item from array - pop() function

We can remove the last element from the array using Array.pop() function. It will also return the last element from the array.

Syntax

Array.pop()

Code Example

let arr = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50];

arr.pop();

console.log(arr);

Output

[10,20,30,40]

Live Demo of pop() function

Remove items from the end using Array.length

We know that Array.length is used to get the count of items that exist in an array. But we can also use this to remove items from the end of an array. We just need to set the length of array and it will remove all the other items from the array.

Code Example

let arr = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50];

arr.length = 3;

console.log(arr);

Output

[10,20,30]

Live Demo for above code

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