Compare two lists, dictionaries in easy way

Question

How to compare two lists or dictionaries in easy way,

eg.

assert orig_list == new_list

If I want to check two lists in python nose tests,

Is there any built-in function can let me use?

Does compare two lists is a bad practice when doing testing ?(because I've never see it)

If there is no built-in, plugin in nose, is there any handy package can do it for me.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1388818/how-can-i-compare-two-lists-in-python-and-return-matches — Ilya Kharlamov, Mar 10 '14 at 06:47

score 11 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 10 '14 at 06:50

11

You can use assertListEqual(a, b) and assertDictEqual(a, b) from the unittest library.

edited Mar 10 '14 at 06:50

alecxe

answered Mar 10 '14 at 06:48

psytau

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 10 '14 at 06:48

1

set is used to do that between two lists/dicts!

set(orig_list) & set(new_list)

answered Mar 10 '14 at 06:48

Sharif Mamun

Yes, doing an `assert_equals(set(orig_list), set(new_list))` prints nice output. You just have to be careful that sometimes you might not want set comparison (when duplicates occur). – metakermit Sep 08 '14 at 16:09

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 10 '14 at 06:52

0

This is one way to do it. Manually checking every element for equality.

(len(a) == len(b)) and  (all(ai == bi for ai,bi in zip(a,b)))

answered Mar 10 '14 at 06:52

M4rtini

3 Answers3