Difference Between Two Lists with Duplicates in Python

Question

I have two lists that contain many of the same items, including duplicate items. I want to check which items in the first list are not in the second list. For example, I mig

Answer 1

You didn't specify if the order matters. If it does not, you can do this in >= Python 2.7:

l1 = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'b', 'c']
l2 = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'b']

from collections import Counter

c1 = Counter(l1)
c2 = Counter(l2)

diff = c1-c2
print list(diff.elements())