On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 8:22 AM, Fillmore <fillmore_rem...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > My problem. I have lists of substrings associated to values: > > ['a','b','c','g'] => 1 > ['a','b','c','h'] => 1 > ['a','b','c','i'] => 1 > ['a','b','c','j'] => 1 > ['a','b','c','k'] => 1 > ['a','b','c','l'] => 0 # <- Black sheep!!! > ['a','b','c','m'] => 1 > ['a','b','c','n'] => 1 > ['a','b','c','o'] => 1 > ['a','b','c','p'] => 1 > > I can check a bit of data against elements in this list > and determine whether the value to be associated to the data is 1 or 0. > > I would like to make my matching algorithm smarter so I can > reduce the total number of lists: > > ['a','b','c','l'] => 0 # If "l" is in my data I have a zero > ['a','b','c'] => 1 # or a more generic match will do the job > > I am trying to think of a way to perform this "reduction", but > I have a feeling I am reinventing the wheel. > > Is this a common problem that is already addressed by an existing module?
Sounds like you probably want a trie data structure. You can google for Python implementations. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
