David Robinow wrote:
On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 9:31 PM, Esmail <ebo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
What is the best way to compare the *contents* of two different
lists regardless of their respective order? The lists will have
the same number of items, and be of the same type.
E.g. a trivial example (my lists will be larger),
a=[1, 2, 3]
b=[2, 3, 1]
should yield true if a==b
I suppose I could sort them and then compare them. I.e.,
sorted(a)==sorted(b)
I am wondering if there is a more efficient/preferred way to do so.
Thanks,
Esmail
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set(a) == set(b) # test if a and b have the same elements
# check that each list has the same number of each element
# i.e. [1,2,1,2] == [1,1,2,2], but [1,2,2,2] != [1,1,1,2]
for elem in set(a):
a.count(elem) == b.count(elem)
Ah .. this part would take care of different number of duplicates
in the lists. Cool.
thanks,
Esmail
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