Subtracting two lists in Python

Question

In Python, How can one subtract two non-unique, unordered lists? Say we have a = [0,1,2,1,0] and b = [0, 1, 1] I\'d like to do something like

Answer 1

Python 2.7 and 3.2 added the collections.Counter class, which is a dictionary subclass that maps elements to the number of occurrences of the element. This can be used as a multiset. You can do something like this:

from collections import Counter
a = Counter([0, 1, 2, 1, 0])
b = Counter([0, 1, 1])
c = a - b  # ignores items in b missing in a

print(list(c.elements()))  # -> [0, 2]

As well, if you want to check that every element in b is in a:

# a[key] returns 0 if key not in a, instead of raising an exception
assert all(a[key] >= b[key] for key in b)

But since you are stuck with 2.5, you could try importing it and define your own version if that fails. That way you will be sure to get the latest version if it is available, and fall back to a working version if not. You will also benefit from speed improvements if if gets converted to a C implementation in the future.

try:
   from collections import Counter
except ImportError:
    class Counter(dict):
       ...

You can find the current Python source here.