Remove item from list based on the next item in same list

Question

I just started learning python and here I have a sorted list of protein sequences (total 59,000 sequences) and some of them overlap. I have made a toy list here for example:

Answer 1

Not an exact match with your expectations, but, given that you state it's sorted (and it's not, near EOEUDNBNUWD EAEUDNBNUW) and that I don't know why you're missing EOEUDNBNUWD I am not sure if your expectations are correctly stated or if I've misread your question.

(ah, yes, I see the notion of overlap throws a wrench into the sort and startswith approach).

Might be nice for the OP to restate that particular aspect, I read @DSM comment without really understanding his concern. Now I do.

li = sorted([i.strip() for i in """
ABCDE
ABCDEFG
ABCDEFGH
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO
CEST
DBTSFDE
DBTSFDEO
EOEUDNBNUW
EOEUDNBNUWD
EAEUDNBNUW
FEOEUDNBNUW
FG
FGH""".splitlines() if i.strip()])

def get_iter(li):
    prev = ""
    for i in li:
        if not i.startswith(prev):
            yield(prev)
        prev = i
    yield prev

for v in get_iter(li):
    print(v)

output:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO
CEST
DBTSFDEO
EAEUDNBNUW
EOEUDNBNUWD
FEOEUDNBNUW
FGH