On Feb 22, 11:20 am, rh0dium <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > found = False > for item in a: > if item[0] == element[0] > found = True > break > if not found: > a.append(element) > > But this is just ugly - Is there a simpler way to interate over all > items in a without using a found flag? > > Thanks
for item in a: if item[0] == element[0] break else: # only called if we never 'break' out of the for loop a.append(element) But what about a dict? adict = dict((elem[0],elem) for elem in a) if item[0] not in adict: adict[item[0]] = item # need the final list? a = adict.values() No list searching, and will scale well if a gets real long. -- Paul -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list