Python list of substrings in list of strings

Question

I'd like to find if a list of substrings is contained in a list. For example, I have:

    string_list = ['item1', 'item2', 'subject3', 'subject4']

and list of substrings

    substrings = ['item', 'subject']

I'd like to find if 'item' or 'subject' are included in any item of string_list. Individually, I would do something like:

    any('item' in x for x in string_list)

This works for one substring but I would like to find a pretty way of searching for both strings in the list of substrings.

You could nest anys, or write a more complex generator expression to create the cross product, or use itertools.product to do it for you. — jonrsharpe
– jonrsharpe, Commented Aug 28, 2017 at 20:18
What is your expected result? Do you want matches where the string_list starts with the substring item, or exact matches? — Alexander
– Alexander, Commented Aug 28, 2017 at 20:25
I'd just like a true or false of whether or not the list of strings contains any of the the strings in the substring list. — Jonathan C Lee
– Jonathan C Lee, Commented Aug 28, 2017 at 20:28

roman · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-28 20:26:31Z

7

any(y in x for x in string_list for y in substrings)

answered Aug 28, 2017 at 20:21

roman

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Comments

Moses Koledoye · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-28 20:18:59Z

2

Since the substrings are actually at the start, you can use str.startswith which can take a tuple of prefixes:

any(x.startswith(('item', 'subject')) for x in string_list)

answered Aug 28, 2017 at 20:18

Moses Koledoye

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Ajax1234 · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-28 20:22:30Z

1

You can try this:

string_list = ['item1', 'item2', 'subject3', 'subject4']

substrings = ['item', 'subject']

any(any(b in i for b in substrings) for i in string_list)

Output:

True

answered Aug 28, 2017 at 20:22

Ajax1234

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