Check if a Python list item contains a string inside another string

python string
SandyBr picture SandyBr · Jan 30, 2011 · Viewed 1.3M times · Source

I have a list:

my_list = ['abc-123', 'def-456', 'ghi-789', 'abc-456']

and want to search for items that contain the string 'abc'. How can I do that?

if 'abc' in my_list:

would check if 'abc' exists in the list but it is a part of 'abc-123' and 'abc-456', 'abc' does not exist on its own. So how can I get all items that contain 'abc' ?

Answer

Sven Marnach picture Sven Marnach · Jan 30, 2011

If you only want to check for the presence of abc in any string in the list, you could try

some_list = ['abc-123', 'def-456', 'ghi-789', 'abc-456']
if any("abc" in s for s in some_list):
    # whatever

If you really want to get all the items containing abc, use

matching = [s for s in some_list if "abc" in s]

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