In Python, how can I find the index of the first item in a list that is NOT some value?

Question

Python\'s list type has an index(x) method. It takes a single parameter x, and returns the (integer) index of the first item in the list that has the value x.

Basica

Answer 1

A silly itertools-based solution:)

import itertools as it, operator as op, functools as ft

def index_ne(item, sequence):
    sequence= iter(sequence)
    counter= it.count(-1) # start counting at -1
    pairs= it.izip(sequence, counter) # pair them
    get_1st= it.imap(op.itemgetter(0), pairs) # drop the used counter value
    ne_scanner= it.ifilter(ft.partial(op.ne, item), get_1st) # get only not-equals
    try:
        ne_scanner.next() # this should be the first not equal
    except StopIteration:
        return None # or raise some exception, all items equal to item
    else:
        return counter.next() # should be the index of the not-equal item

if __name__ == "__main__":
    import random

    test_data= [0]*20
    print "failure", index_ne(0, test_data)

    index= random.randrange(len(test_data))
    test_data[index]= 1
    print "success:", index_ne(0, test_data), "should be", index

All this just to take advantage of the itertools.count counting :)