CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonlist
Cowin Chan
Cowin Chan

Reputation: 11

How can I search an item in a list of lists?

I am doing a school project about a inventory system, and I am facing some problem in programming the Search function.

Take an example:

ilist = [ [1,2,3,4,5], [6,7,8,9,10], [...], ...]

I would like to search for 1 and want the list containing 1 to display.

search = input('By user:')
for item in ilist:
  if item == search :
     print(item)

It does not work this way and I get this error:

list index out of range error

Upvotes: 0

Views: 118

Answers (3)

Gangaraju
Gangaraju

Reputation: 4562

You can use in to find the element from each list 

search = int(input('By user:'))
for item in ilist:
    if search in item:
        print(item)

Upvotes: 0

Chrisvdberge
Chrisvdberge

Reputation: 1966

you have a nested list and are now checking against the list ('1' wont match with [1,2,3,4,5] )

so you have to loop over the list within the list and change input to int:

ilist = [ [1,2,3,4,5], [6,7,8,9,10]]

search = input('By user:')
for item in ilist:
    for i in item:
        if i == int(search):
            print(i)

this is building on your way of coding, could be further improved from this

Upvotes: 3

goodvibration
goodvibration

Reputation: 6206

Two problems:

  1. ilist is a list of lists, and you're comparing search to each list
  2. Each member in each list is of type int, while search is of type str

In short, change this:

if item == search

To this:

if int(search) in item

Upvotes: 2

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