How to check if one of the following items is in a list?

Question

I\'m trying to find a short way to see if any of the following items is in a list, but my first attempt does not work. Besides writing a function to accomplish this, is the

Answer 1

Think about what the code actually says!

>>> (1 or 2)
1
>>> (2 or 1)
2

That should probably explain it. :) Python apparently implements "lazy or", which should come as no surprise. It performs it something like this:

def or(x, y):
    if x: return x
    if y: return y
    return False

In the first example, x == 1 and y == 2. In the second example, it's vice versa. That's why it returns different values depending on the order of them.