How can I compare two lists in python and return matches

Question

I want to take two lists and find the values that appear in both.

a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
b = [9, 8, 7, 6, 5]

returnMatches(a, b)

would return

Answer 1

You can use:

a = [1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 6, 7, 8]
b = [1, 7, 0, 9]
same_values = set(a) & set(b)
print same_values

Output:

set([1, 7, 9])