On Aug 20, 12:17 pm, Steven D'Aprano <steve +comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > Jurgens de Bruin wrote: > > Hi, > > > I have a list of tuples: > > > [(2,),(12,13),(2,3,4),(8,),(5,6),(7,8,9),] > > > I would like to compare all the tuples to each other and if one > > element if found two tuples the smallest tuples is removed from the > > list. > > It's not clear what you mean by "smallest" tuple. Is (8,) smaller than > (7,8,9)? > > I'm going to guess you care only about the length of the tuple, and not the > items themselves. > > Let's start with a couple of helper functions. > > def compare(t1, t2): > 'Return -1 if t1 is "smaller" than t2, 0 if equal, and +1 if "bigger".' > if len(t1) < len(t2): return -1 > elif len(t1) > len(t2): return 1 > else: return 0 > > def match_any_item(t1, t2): > try: > s1 = set(t1) > s2 = set(t2) > return bool(s1 & s2) > except TypeError: > # Can't convert to sets because at least one item is mutable. > # Let's do this the slow(?) way. > matched = [x for x in t1 if x in t2] > return bool(matched) > > list_of_tuples = [(2,),(12,13),(2,3,4),(8,),(5,6),(7,8,9),] > flags = [True]*len(list_of_tuples) > for i,t1 in enumerate(list_of_tuples): > for j in range(i+1, len(list_of_tuples)): > t2 = list_of_tuples[j] > if match_any_item(t1, t2): > n = compare(t1, t2) > if n == -1: > # Flag t1 to be removed. > flags[i] = False > elif n == 1: > # Flag t2 to be removed. > flags[j] = False > > saved_tuples = [] > for t,flag in zip(list_of_tuples, flags): > if flag: saved_tuples.append(t) > > This gives: > > >>> saved_tuples > > [(12, 13), (2, 3, 4), (5, 6), (7, 8, 9)] > > which matches what you wanted: > > > [(12,13),(2,3,4),(5,6),(7,8,9),] > > -- > Steven
Thanks Steven. This works great!!! Appreciated very much!!! -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
