Pandas drop column in place and return it

Question

This seems clunky:

col = df['col']
df.drop(columns=['col'], inplace=True)

Is there a way to drop a columns and return it on the same line?

Answer 1

Looks like you need df.pop()

Ex:

df = pd.DataFrame(pd.np.random.randint(0, 10, (4,3)), columns=['a','b','c'])
a = df.pop("a")