Finding the indices of matching elements in list in Python

Question

I have a long list of float numbers ranging from 1 to 5, called \"average\", and I want to return the list of indices for elements that are smaller than a or larger than b

Answer 1

if you're doing a lot of this kind of thing you should consider using numpy.

In [56]: import random, numpy

In [57]: lst = numpy.array([random.uniform(0, 5) for _ in range(1000)]) # example list

In [58]: a, b = 1, 3

In [59]: numpy.flatnonzero((lst > a) & (lst < b))[:10]
Out[59]: array([ 0, 12, 13, 15, 18, 19, 23, 24, 26, 29])

In response to Seanny123's question, I used this timing code:

import numpy, timeit, random

a, b = 1, 3

lst = numpy.array([random.uniform(0, 5) for _ in range(1000)])

def numpy_way():
    numpy.flatnonzero((lst > 1) & (lst < 3))[:10]

def list_comprehension():
    [e for e in lst if 1 < e < 3][:10]

print timeit.timeit(numpy_way)
print timeit.timeit(list_comprehension)

The numpy version is over 60 times faster.