How to check of the existence of any value in the list in python

Question

I have the list like

l = ['dd','rr','abcde']

l2 = ['ddf','fdfd','123']

I want one function which return true if any of the value from l exist in l2.

Now that can be partial matching as well. i mean that string should present in l2

EDIT:

The output should be either true of false

Like in my example it should return true because dd is matching with ddf

What would be the expected output for your example? Also, what have you tried so far? — cyroxx, Apr 22 '13 at 12:05
This has been answered here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1388818/how-can-i-compare-two-lists-in-python-and-return-matches and is quite a good solution — user2307241, Apr 22 '13 at 12:07

Pavel Anossov · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-22T12:12:56.373

5

This returns True if any value from l is a substring of any value in l2:

any(l_value in l2_value for l_value in l for l2_value in l2)

edited Apr 22 '13 at 12:12

answered Apr 22 '13 at 12:05

Pavel Anossov

By last sentence i mean that your function should give true as output as `dd` in l1 is matching with `ddf` – user2294401 Apr 22 '13 at 12:09

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 22 '13 at 12:14

1

Nested loops:

print any(sub in full for sub in l for full in l2)

Efficient nested loops

from itertools import product
print any(sub in full for sub, full in product(l, l2))

No loops:

import re
print re.match('|'.join(l), ' '.join(l2))

answered Apr 22 '13 at 12:14

georg

1

`product` is not more efficient. All this tuple creation and unpacking adds up. – Pavel Anossov Apr 22 '13 at 12:18
@PavelAnossov: efficient != fast – georg Apr 22 '13 at 12:57

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 22 '13 at 12:50

0

def match():
   for e in l:
      for e2 in l2:
          if e in e2:
              return True
   else:
       return False

This will include the partial matches.

UPDATE: Using list comprehension:

[re.search(x,",".join(l2)) for x in l if re.search(x,",".join(l2)) is not None] and 'True' or 'False'

edited Apr 22 '13 at 12:50

jamylak

answered Apr 22 '13 at 12:11

thavan

3 Answers3