Python - Remove any element from a list of strings that is a substring of another element

Question

So starting with a list of strings, as below

string_list = [\'rest\', \'resting\', \'look\', \'looked\', \'it\', \'spit\']

I wan

Answer 1

Here's is the efficient way of doing it (relative to the above solutions ;) ) as this approach reduces the number of comparisons between the list elements a lot. If I have a huge list, I'd definitely go with this and of course you can morph this solution into a lambda function to make it look small:

string_list = ['rest', 'resting', 'look', 'looked', 'it', 'spit']
for item in string_list: 
  for item1 in string_list:
    if item in item1 and item!= item1:
      string_list.remove(item)

print string_list

Output:

>>>['resting', 'looked', 'spit']

Hope it helps !