Dennis Lee Bieber wrote: > On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 13:30:45 +0200, Mohammed Altaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > declaimed the following in comp.lang.python: > > > > Thanks , but , this work for an ordered substrings , just like what we > > had ['0132442\n', '13\n', '24\n'] , I would like to remove all > > substrings from the list , example > > > > ['0134314244133', '132443', '234'] > > > > > > 2nd and 3rd strings are also substrings from the 1st one , so it should > > be removed > > > > One of us must be using a non-standard definition of "substring" as > "234" does not appear anywhere within either "132443" or > "0134314244133".
I don't understand "234" either, but I can see some pattern in "132443". "132443" is a 'subsubstring' "0134314244133" because: 0134314244133 -##----###-#- Maybe "234" is just a typo, and it should be "243". def subsubstr(a, b): if b == '': return True if a == '': return False else: if a[0] == b[0]: return subsubstr(a[1:], b[1:]) else: return subsubstr(a[1:], b) I can give you more efficient, index-based sulution, but this one looks nicer. BranoZ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list