I need Python to search all the sublists of a given list, but this does not work when I'm searching for an element contained in only one of them. For example, this is my code:
data = [[4,5],[4,7]]
search = 4
for sublist in data:
if search in sublist:
print("there", sublist)
else:
print("not there")
print(data)
and this works very well if my search is contained in all of the sublists of the lists. However, if my search is, for instance, 5, then I get:
there [4,5] #I only want this part.
not there # I don't want the rest.
[[4, 5], [4, 7]]
EDIT:
Basically, I need Python to list all the lists the search is contained in, but if the search is only contained in one sublist, I only want the print("there", sublist)
. In other words, I only want Python to recognize the places the search is in, and not output where it is not, so no print("not there") print(data)
.
Try using a boolean tag. For example:
data = [[4,5],[4,7]]
search = 5
found = false
for sublist in data:
if search in sublist:
print("there", sublist)
found = true
if found == false:
print("not there")
print(data)
This way the print data is outside the for loop and won't be printed each time a sublist is found that does not contain search.
What you were probably trying to write:
data = [[4,5],[4,7]]
search = 4
found = False
for sublist in data:
if search in sublist:
found = True
break
# do something based on found
A better way to write that:
any(search in sublist for sublist in data)
data = [[4,5],[4,7]]
search = 4
found_flag = False
for sublist in data:
if search in sublist:
print("there", sublist)
found_flag = True
# else:
# print("not there")
# print(data)
if not found_flag:
print('not found')
There is no reason to include the else
clause if you don't want to do anything with the sub-lists that don't include the search value.
A nifty use of else
is after the for
block (but this only will find one entry) (doc):
data = [[4,5],[4,7]]
search = 4
for sublist in data:
if search in sublist:
print("there", sublist)
break
else:
print 'not there'
which will execute the else
block if it makes it through the whole loop with out hitting a break
.
You might be looking for
for sublist in data:
if search in sublist:
print("there", sublist)
break
else:
print("not there")
print(data)
data = [[4,5],[4,7],[5,6],[4,5]]
search = 5
for sublist in data:
if search in sublist:
print "there in ",sublist
else:
print "not there in " , sublist
there in [4, 5]
not there in [4, 7]
there in [5, 6]
there in [4, 5]
I just tried your code, and i am not seeing anything wrong while searching 5