CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonregexstringlist
rbv
rbv

Reputation: 487

How to match two lists of strings with regex in Python

I have two lists of strings in Python. One of them is a list of desired strings, the other is a larger list of different strings. For example:

desired = ["cat52", "dog64"]
buf = ["horse101", "elephant5", "dog64", "mouse90", "cat52"]

I need a True/False for whether the second list contains all the strings in the first list. So far I did this with:

if all(element in buf for element in desired)

However, now I need the list of desired strings to have some regex properties. For example:

desired = ["cat52", "dog[0-9]+"]

I've looked into the re and regex python libraries but I can't figure out a statement that gives me what I want. Any help would be appreciated.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1303

Answers (1)

Nick
Nick

Reputation: 147166

You need to test whether any of the strings in buf match each regex in desired, and then return True if all of them do:

import re

buf = ["horse101", "elephant5", "dog64", "mouse90", "cat52"]
desired = ["cat52", "dog[0-9]+"]

print(all(any(re.match(d + '$', b) for b in buf) for d in desired))

Output:

True

Note that we add $ to the regex so that (for example) dog[0-9]+ will not match dog4a (adding ^ to the beginning is not necessary as re.match anchors matches to the start of the string).

Upvotes: 2

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