Python: Check if string in a list of strings does not contains variable

Question

I have a list of strings:

my_list = ["John 123", "Johnny 232", "Jane 344"]

What I want to do is check if a string in my_list does not contain a variable exactly, but anything else in the string after the variable doesn't matter.

For example if I have var = "John", my_list[0] would return True, but both my_list[1] and my_list[2] would return False. I need to check the entire list or until one returns True, whichever comes first.

EDIT: Here's a snippet of the actual code I'm working on:

names = []

rank, male, female = info
 for name in names:
  if male not in names:
   names.append(male + " " + rank + '\n')
  if female not in names:
   names.append(female + " " + rank + '\n')

info gets pulled from a html file, but for example will be something like ['123', 'John', 'Jane'], a number followed by a male name and a female name. My problem as of now is obviously the if statements will always be True, resulting in duplicate entries besides for the number.

Use word boundaries, e.g. for the first case search for `\bJohn\b` — Tim Biegeleisen, Dec 14 '20 at 04:26
Hello! What have you done so far :D you can kindly paste your code. — Ice Bear, Dec 14 '20 at 04:27
You can check my answer if it satisfies to the solution to your problem :D — Ice Bear, Dec 14 '20 at 06:09
Now you leave us wondering what's in `info`. Please reduce this to a [mre]. — tripleee, Dec 14 '20 at 06:29

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 14 '20 at 04:30

0

You can use the any() function for this, along with a list comprehension.

if any(var in item for item in my_list)

answered Dec 14 '20 at 04:30

John Gordon

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This doesn't work. If var = "John", both "John" and "Johnny" will return true, when only "John" should. – Ian Waddell Dec 14 '20 at 05:10
@IanWaddell Ahh, I overlooked that requirement. My bad. – John Gordon Dec 14 '20 at 05:18

Ice Bear · Accepted Answer · 2020-12-14T06:12:49.483

0

You could do it with regular expressions easily. List comprehension

import re


my_list = ["John 123", "Johnny 232", "Jane 344"]

#Just an output list for you to see the True & False output
outputlist = []


for name in my_list:
    if re.search(r'\bJohn\b',name) != None:
        outputlist.append(True)
    else:
        outputlist.append(False)



'''
#List comprehension
outputlist = [True if re.search(r'\bJohn\b',name) != None else False for name in my_list]
'''

print(outputlist)

Output:

[True, False, False]
[Finished in 0.3s]

edited Dec 14 '20 at 06:12

answered Dec 14 '20 at 06:06

Ice Bear

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8
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This works perfectly, but how do I do the same with a variable instead of hard coding "John"? I'm lousy with regex haha – Ian Waddell Dec 14 '20 at 06:41
you mean a `variable`? containing a specific string? you can just change from the regex like this for example `re.search(r'\b'+variable+'\b',name)` – Ice Bear Dec 14 '20 at 06:43

Python: Check if string in a list of strings does not contains variable

2 Answers2