Fastest way to check if a string contains specific characters in any of the items in a list

Question

What is the fastest way to check if a string contains some characters from any items of a list?

Currently, I\'m using this method:

lestring = \"Text1         


        

Answer 1

The esmre library does the trick. In your case, the simpler, esm (part of esmre) is what you want.

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/esmre/

https://code.google.com/p/esmre/

They have good documentation and examples: Taken from their examples:

>>> import esm
>>> index = esm.Index()
>>> index.enter("he")
>>> index.enter("she")
>>> index.enter("his")
>>> index.enter("hers")
>>> index.fix()
>>> index.query("this here is history")
[((1, 4), 'his'), ((5, 7), 'he'), ((13, 16), 'his')]
>>> index.query("Those are his sheep!")
[((10, 13), 'his'), ((14, 17), 'she'), ((15, 17), 'he')]
>>> 

I ran some performance tests:

import random, timeit, string, esm

def uz(lelist, lestring):
    for x in lelist:
        if lestring.count(x):
            return 'Yep. "%s" contains characters from "%s" item.' % (lestring, x)



def ab(lelist, lestring):
    return [e for e in lelist if e in lestring]


def use_esm(index, lestring):
    return index.query(lestring)

for TEXT_LEN in [5, 50, 1000]:
    for SEARCH_LEN in [5, 20]:
        for N in [5, 50, 1000, 10000]:
            if TEXT_LEN < SEARCH_LEN:
                continue

            print 'TEXT_LEN:', TEXT_LEN, 'SEARCH_LEN:', SEARCH_LEN, 'N:', N

            lestring = ''.join((random.choice(string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits) for _ in range(TEXT_LEN)))
            lelist = [''.join((random.choice(string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits) for _ in range(SEARCH_LEN))) for _
                      in range(N)]

            index = esm.Index()
            for i in lelist:
                index.enter(i)
            index.fix()

            t_ab = timeit.Timer("ab(lelist, lestring)", setup="from __main__ import lelist, lestring, ab")
            t_uz = timeit.Timer("uz(lelist, lestring)", setup="from __main__ import lelist, lestring, uz")
            t_esm = timeit.Timer("use_esm(index, lestring)", setup="from __main__ import index, lestring, use_esm")

            ab_time = t_ab.timeit(1000)
            uz_time = t_uz.timeit(1000)
            esm_time = t_esm.timeit(1000)

            min_time = min(ab_time, uz_time, esm_time)
            print '  ab%s: %f' % ('*' if ab_time == min_time else '', ab_time)
            print '  uz%s: %f' % ('*' if uz_time == min_time else '', uz_time)
            print '  esm%s %f:' % ('*' if esm_time == min_time else '', esm_time)

And got that results depends mostly on the number of items that one is looking for (in my case, 'N'):

TEXT_LEN: 1000 SEARCH_LEN: 20 N: 5
  ab*: 0.001733
  uz: 0.002512
  esm 0.126853:

TEXT_LEN: 1000 SEARCH_LEN: 20 N: 50
  ab*: 0.017564
  uz: 0.023701
  esm 0.079925:

TEXT_LEN: 1000 SEARCH_LEN: 20 N: 1000
  ab: 0.370371
  uz: 0.489523
  esm* 0.133783:

TEXT_LEN: 1000 SEARCH_LEN: 20 N: 10000
  ab: 3.678790
  uz: 4.883575
  esm* 0.259605: