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How to filter out strings that do not start with specific chars from a list [python]? [duplicate]

Given the list ['a','ab','abc','bac'], I want to compute a list with strings that have 'ab' in them. I.e. the result is ['ab','abc']. How can this be done in Python?

This simple filtering can be achieved in many ways with Python. The best approach is to use "list comprehensions" as follows:
>>> lst = ['a', 'ab', 'abc', 'bac']
>>> [k for k in lst if 'ab' in k]
['ab', 'abc']
Another way is to use the filter function. In Python 2:
>>> filter(lambda k: 'ab' in k, lst)
['ab', 'abc']
In Python 3, it returns an iterator instead of a list, but you can cast it:
>>> list(filter(lambda k: 'ab' in k, lst))
['ab', 'abc']
Though it's better practice to use a comprehension.

[x for x in L if 'ab' in x]

# To support matches from the beginning, not any matches:
items = ['a', 'ab', 'abc', 'bac']
prefix = 'ab'
filter(lambda x: x.startswith(prefix), items)

Tried this out quickly in the interactive shell:
>>> l = ['a', 'ab', 'abc', 'bac']
>>> [x for x in l if 'ab' in x]
['ab', 'abc']
>>>
Why does this work? Because the in operator is defined for strings to mean: "is substring of".
Also, you might want to consider writing out the loop as opposed to using the list comprehension syntax used above:
l = ['a', 'ab', 'abc', 'bac']
result = []
for s in l:
if 'ab' in s:
result.append(s)

mylist = ['a', 'ab', 'abc']
assert 'ab' in mylist

Sorting list with custom order in Python

Hello I currently have two lists, as shown below:
list1 = [Alpha, Beta, Charlie, Delta, Echo]
list2 = [B, A, E, C, D]
I would like to use list2 to sort list1, I have tried using:
list1.sort(key=list2.index)
However, the letters are unable to be found within the word. Is there a way to sort list1 without each of their full name?

You must sort according to the first letter of the words:
list1 = ['Alpha', 'Beta', 'Charlie', 'Delta', 'Echo']
list2 = ['B', 'A', 'E', 'C', 'D']
out = list(sorted(list1, key=lambda word: list2.index(word[0])))
print(out)
# ['Beta', 'Alpha', 'Echo', 'Charlie', 'Delta']
index will have to iterate on list2 each time though. It might be more efficient to build a dict giving the index of each letter first, so that we can find the indices in O(1) when sorting:
list1 = ['Alpha', 'Beta', 'Charlie', 'Delta', 'Echo']
list2 = ['B', 'A', 'E', 'C', 'D']
dict2 = {letter: index for index, letter in enumerate(list2)}
out = list(sorted(list1, key=lambda word: dict2[word[0]]))
print(out)
# ['Beta', 'Alpha', 'Echo', 'Charlie', 'Delta']

numpy arrays are really helpful here:
import numpy as np
indices = np.searchsorted(list1, list2) #numpy array [1 0 4 2 3]
Now we have indices that tell the order of names taken from list1. Now we are able to access the output in two ways:
First way (using list comprehension):
list1[i for i in indices]
Second way (using numpy index arrays):
list(np.array(list1)[indices])
Output:
['Beta', 'Alpha', 'Echo', 'Charlie', 'Delta']

Print biggest len of several lists

I have several lists in one list and I want to compare the length of the lists and print the list with biggest number of len.
example:
somelist = [['a','b','c'],['a','b']]
the first list has a bigger len (3) than the second list (2), how do I print this in python?

Use the max() function with a generator expression:
max(len(l) for l in somelist)
This calculates the length for each sublist and returns the largest one.
If instead you wanted to extract the list with the longest length itself (so ['a', 'b', 'c'] rather than 3, use len as the key argument:
max(somelist, key=len)
Demo:
>>> somelist = [['a', 'b', 'c'], ['a', 'b']]
>>> max(len(l) for l in somelist)
3
>>> max(somelist, key=len)
['a', 'b', 'c']

Python: function that gets n-th element of a list

I have a list of strings like
['ABC', 'DEF', 'GHIJ']
and I want a list of strings containing the first letter of each string, i.e.
['A', 'D', 'G'].
I thought about doing that using map and the function that returns the first element of a list: my_list[0]. But how can I pass this to map?
Thanks.

you can try
In [14]: l = ['ABC', 'DEF', 'GHIJ']
In [15]: [x[0] for x in l]
Out[15]: ['A', 'D', 'G']

You should use a list comprehension, like #avasal since it's more pythonic, but here's how to do it with map:
>>> from operator import itemgetter
>>> L = ['ABC', 'DEF', 'GHIJ']
>>> map(itemgetter(0), L)
['A', 'D', 'G']

use list comprehension like so:
results = [i[0] for i in mySrcList]

One way:
l1=['ABC', 'DEF', 'GHIJ']
l1=map(lambda x:x[0], l1)

a=['ABC','DEF','GHI']
b=[]
for i in a:
b.append(i[0])
b is the array you need.

Try this.
>>> myArray=['ABC', 'DEF', 'GHIJ']
>>> newArray=[]
>>> for i in map(lambda x:x[0],myArray):
... newArray.append(i)
...
>>> print(newArray)
['A', 'D', 'G']

Pythonic way to combine (interleave, interlace, intertwine) two lists in an alternating fashion?

I have two lists, the first of which is guaranteed to contain exactly one more item than the second. I would like to know the most Pythonic way to create a new list whose even-index values come from the first list and whose odd-index values come from the second list.
# example inputs
list1 = ['f', 'o', 'o']
list2 = ['hello', 'world']
# desired output
['f', 'hello', 'o', 'world', 'o']
This works, but isn't pretty:
list3 = []
while True:
try:
list3.append(list1.pop(0))
list3.append(list2.pop(0))
except IndexError:
break
How else can this be achieved? What's the most Pythonic approach?
If you need to handle lists of mismatched length (e.g. the second list is longer, or the first has more than one element more than the second), some solutions here will work while others will require adjustment. For more specific answers, see How to interleave two lists of different length? to leave the excess elements at the end, or How to elegantly interleave two lists of uneven length? to try to intersperse elements evenly, or Insert element in Python list after every nth element for the case where a specific number of elements should come before each "added" element.

Here's one way to do it by slicing:
>>> list1 = ['f', 'o', 'o']
>>> list2 = ['hello', 'world']
>>> result = [None]*(len(list1)+len(list2))
>>> result[::2] = list1
>>> result[1::2] = list2
>>> result
['f', 'hello', 'o', 'world', 'o']

There's a recipe for this in the itertools documentation (note: for Python 3):
from itertools import cycle, islice
def roundrobin(*iterables):
"roundrobin('ABC', 'D', 'EF') --> A D E B F C"
# Recipe credited to George Sakkis
num_active = len(iterables)
nexts = cycle(iter(it).__next__ for it in iterables)
while num_active:
try:
for next in nexts:
yield next()
except StopIteration:
# Remove the iterator we just exhausted from the cycle.
num_active -= 1
nexts = cycle(islice(nexts, num_active))

import itertools
print([x for x in itertools.chain.from_iterable(itertools.zip_longest(list1,list2)) if x])
I think this is the most pythonic way of doing it.

In Python 2, this should do what you want:
>>> iters = [iter(list1), iter(list2)]
>>> print list(it.next() for it in itertools.cycle(iters))
['f', 'hello', 'o', 'world', 'o']

Without itertools and assuming l1 is 1 item longer than l2:
>>> sum(zip(l1, l2+[0]), ())[:-1]
('f', 'hello', 'o', 'world', 'o')
In python 2, using itertools and assuming that lists don't contain None:
>>> filter(None, sum(itertools.izip_longest(l1, l2), ()))
('f', 'hello', 'o', 'world', 'o')

If both lists have equal length, you can do:
[x for y in zip(list1, list2) for x in y]
As the first list has one more element, you can add it post hoc:
[x for y in zip(list1, list2) for x in y] + [list1[-1]]
Edit: To illustrate what is happening in that first list comprehension, this is how you would spell it out as a nested for loop:
result = []
for y in zip(list1, list2): # y is is a 2-tuple, containining one element from each list
for x in y: # iterate over the 2-tuple
result.append(x) # append each element individually

I know the questions asks about two lists with one having one item more than the other, but I figured I would put this for others who may find this question.
Here is Duncan's solution adapted to work with two lists of different sizes.
list1 = ['f', 'o', 'o', 'b', 'a', 'r']
list2 = ['hello', 'world']
num = min(len(list1), len(list2))
result = [None]*(num*2)
result[::2] = list1[:num]
result[1::2] = list2[:num]
result.extend(list1[num:])
result.extend(list2[num:])
result
This outputs:
['f', 'hello', 'o', 'world', 'o', 'b', 'a', 'r']

Here's a one liner that does it:
list3 = [ item for pair in zip(list1, list2 + [0]) for item in pair][:-1]

Here's a one liner using list comprehensions, w/o other libraries:
list3 = [sub[i] for i in range(len(list2)) for sub in [list1, list2]] + [list1[-1]]
Here is another approach, if you allow alteration of your initial list1 by side effect:
[list1.insert((i+1)*2-1, list2[i]) for i in range(len(list2))]

This one is based on Carlos Valiente's contribution above
with an option to alternate groups of multiple items and make sure that all items are present in the output :
A=["a","b","c","d"]
B=[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16]
def cyclemix(xs, ys, n=1):
for p in range(0,int((len(ys)+len(xs))/n)):
for g in range(0,min(len(ys),n)):
yield ys[0]
ys.append(ys.pop(0))
for g in range(0,min(len(xs),n)):
yield xs[0]
xs.append(xs.pop(0))
print [x for x in cyclemix(A, B, 3)]
This will interlace lists A and B by groups of 3 values each:
['a', 'b', 'c', 1, 2, 3, 'd', 'a', 'b', 4, 5, 6, 'c', 'd', 'a', 7, 8, 9, 'b', 'c', 'd', 10, 11, 12, 'a', 'b', 'c', 13, 14, 15]

Might be a bit late buy yet another python one-liner. This works when the two lists have equal or unequal size. One thing worth nothing is it will modify a and b. If it's an issue, you need to use other solutions.
a = ['f', 'o', 'o']
b = ['hello', 'world']
sum([[a.pop(0), b.pop(0)] for i in range(min(len(a), len(b)))],[])+a+b
['f', 'hello', 'o', 'world', 'o']

from itertools import chain
list(chain(*zip('abc', 'def'))) # Note: this only works for lists of equal length
['a', 'd', 'b', 'e', 'c', 'f']

itertools.zip_longest returns an iterator of tuple pairs with any missing elements in one list replaced with fillvalue=None (passing fillvalue=object lets you use None as a value). If you flatten these pairs, then filter fillvalue in a list comprehension, this gives:
>>> from itertools import zip_longest
>>> def merge(a, b):
... return [
... x for y in zip_longest(a, b, fillvalue=object)
... for x in y if x is not object
... ]
...
>>> merge("abc", "defgh")
['a', 'd', 'b', 'e', 'c', 'f', 'g', 'h']
>>> merge([0, 1, 2], [4])
[0, 4, 1, 2]
>>> merge([0, 1, 2], [4, 5, 6, 7, 8])
[0, 4, 1, 5, 2, 6, 7, 8]
Generalized to arbitrary iterables:
>>> def merge(*its):
... return [
... x for y in zip_longest(*its, fillvalue=object)
... for x in y if x is not object
... ]
...
>>> merge("abc", "lmn1234", "xyz9", [None])
['a', 'l', 'x', None, 'b', 'm', 'y', 'c', 'n', 'z', '1', '9', '2', '3', '4']
>>> merge(*["abc", "x"]) # unpack an iterable
['a', 'x', 'b', 'c']
Finally, you may want to return a generator rather than a list comprehension:
>>> def merge(*its):
... return (
... x for y in zip_longest(*its, fillvalue=object)
... for x in y if x is not object
... )
...
>>> merge([1], [], [2, 3, 4])
<generator object merge.<locals>.<genexpr> at 0x000001996B466740>
>>> next(merge([1], [], [2, 3, 4]))
1
>>> list(merge([1], [], [2, 3, 4]))
[1, 2, 3, 4]
If you're OK with other packages, you can try more_itertools.roundrobin:
>>> list(roundrobin('ABC', 'D', 'EF'))
['A', 'D', 'E', 'B', 'F', 'C']

My take:
a = "hlowrd"
b = "el ol"
def func(xs, ys):
ys = iter(ys)
for x in xs:
yield x
yield ys.next()
print [x for x in func(a, b)]

def combine(list1, list2):
lst = []
len1 = len(list1)
len2 = len(list2)
for index in range( max(len1, len2) ):
if index+1 <= len1:
lst += [list1[index]]
if index+1 <= len2:
lst += [list2[index]]
return lst

How about numpy? It works with strings as well:
import numpy as np
np.array([[a,b] for a,b in zip([1,2,3],[2,3,4,5,6])]).ravel()
Result:
array([1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4])

Stops on the shortest:
def interlace(*iters, next = next) -> collections.Iterable:
"""
interlace(i1, i2, ..., in) -> (
i1-0, i2-0, ..., in-0,
i1-1, i2-1, ..., in-1,
.
.
.
i1-n, i2-n, ..., in-n,
)
"""
return map(next, cycle([iter(x) for x in iters]))
Sure, resolving the next/__next__ method may be faster.

Multiple one-liners inspired by answers to another question:
import itertools
list(itertools.chain.from_iterable(itertools.izip_longest(list1, list2, fillvalue=object)))[:-1]
[i for l in itertools.izip_longest(list1, list2, fillvalue=object) for i in l if i is not object]
[item for sublist in map(None, list1, list2) for item in sublist][:-1]

An alternative in a functional & immutable way (Python 3):
from itertools import zip_longest
from functools import reduce
reduce(lambda lst, zipped: [*lst, *zipped] if zipped[1] != None else [*lst, zipped[0]], zip_longest(list1, list2),[])

using for loop also we can achive this easily:
list1 = ['f', 'o', 'o']
list2 = ['hello', 'world']
list3 = []
for i in range(len(list1)):
#print(list3)
list3.append(list1[i])
if i < len(list2):
list3.append(list2[i])
print(list3)
output :
['f', 'hello', 'o', 'world', 'o']
Further by using list comprehension this can be reduced. But for understanding this loop can be used.

My approach looks as follows:
from itertools import chain, zip_longest
def intersperse(*iterators):
# A random object not occurring in the iterators
filler = object()
r = (x for x in chain.from_iterable(zip_longest(*iterators, fillvalue=filler)) if x is not filler)
return r
list1 = ['f', 'o', 'o']
list2 = ['hello', 'world']
print(list(intersperse(list1, list2)))
It works for an arbitrary number of iterators and yields an iterator, so I applied list() in the print line.

def alternate_elements(small_list, big_list):
mew = []
count = 0
for i in range(len(small_list)):
mew.append(small_list[i])
mew.append(big_list[i])
count +=1
return mew+big_list[count:]
if len(l2)>len(l1):
res = alternate_elements(l1,l2)
else:
res = alternate_elements(l2,l1)
print(res)
Here we swap lists based on size and perform, can someone provide better solution with time complexity O(len(l1)+len(l2))

I'd do the simple:
chain.from_iterable( izip( list1, list2 ) )
It'll come up with an iterator without creating any additional storage needs.

This is nasty but works no matter the size of the lists:
list3 = [
element for element in
list(itertools.chain.from_iterable([
val for val in itertools.izip_longest(list1, list2)
]))
if element != None
]

Obviously late to the party, but here's a concise one for equal-length lists:
output = [e for sub in zip(list1,list2) for e in sub]
It generalizes for an arbitrary number of equal-length lists, too:
output = [e for sub in zip(list1,list2,list3) for e in sub]
etc.

I'm too old to be down with list comprehensions, so:
import operator
list3 = reduce(operator.add, zip(list1, list2))