How do I match items in one list against items in another list in Python

Question

Having trouble finding a python solution to matching elements of one list against elements in another list without a whole pile of \"for\" and \"if\" loops. I\'m hoping to f

Answer 1

Not sure how much it would change in terms of performance, but you could write a filter function

For example in the second case (if you're looking for exact matches)

def fileFilter(f):
    if f in filename_badwords:
        return False
    else:
        return True

Then use:

goodFiles = filter(fileFilter, htmlfiles)

The advantage this has over set intersection is you can make the filter function as complex as you want (you have multiple conditions in your first example)

Answer 2

Trying to answer this part of the question matching elements of one list against elements in another list could use set(), for example:

a = ['a','b','c','d','g']
b = ['a','c','g','f','z']

list(set(a).intersection(b)) # returns common elements in the two lists