On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 4:26 PM, Johannes <dajo.m...@web.de> wrote: > hi list, > what is the best way to check if a given list (lets call it l1) is > totally contained in a second list (l2)? > > for example: > l1 = [1,2], l2 = [1,2,3,4,5] -> l1 is contained in l2 > l1 = [1,2,2,], l2 = [1,2,3,4,5] -> l1 is not contained in l2 > l1 = [1,2,3], l2 = [1,3,5,7] -> l1 is not contained in l2 > > my problem is the second example, which makes it impossible to work with > sets insteads of lists. But something like set.issubset for lists would > be nice. > > greatz Johannes > -- > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list >
Probably not the most efficient way, but I wanted to mention it: from difflib import SequenceMatcher def list_in(a, b): '''Is a completely contained in b?''' matcher = SequenceMatcher(a=a, b=b) m = matcher.find_longest_match(0, len(a), 0, len(b)) return m.size == len(a) Cheers, ~Simon -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list