Python: split a list based on a condition?

Question

What's the best way, both aesthetically and from a performance perspective, to split a list of items into multiple lists based on a conditional? The equivalent of:

good = [x for x in mylist if x in goodvals]
bad  = [x for x in mylist if x not in goodvals]

is there a more elegant way to do this?

Update: here's the actual use case, to better explain what I'm trying to do:

# files looks like: [ ('file1.jpg', 33L, '.jpg'), ('file2.avi', 999L, '.avi'), ... ]
IMAGE_TYPES = ('.jpg','.jpeg','.gif','.bmp','.png')
images = [f for f in files if f[2].lower() in IMAGE_TYPES]
anims  = [f for f in files if f[2].lower() not in IMAGE_TYPES]

Answer 1

Sometimes you won't need that other half of the list. For example:

import sys
from itertools import ifilter

trustedPeople = sys.argv[1].split(',')
newName = sys.argv[2]

myFriends = ifilter(lambda x: x.startswith('Shi'), trustedPeople)

print '%s is %smy friend.' % (newName, newName not in myFriends 'not ' or '')

Answer 2

def partition(pred, seq):
  return reduce( lambda (yes, no), x: (yes+[x], no) if pred(x) else (yes, no+[x]), seq, ([], []) )

Answer 3

Sometimes, it looks like list comprehension is not the best thing to use !

I made a little test based on the answer people gave to this topic, tested on a random generated list. Here is the generation of the list (there's probably a better way to do, but it's not the point) :

good_list = ('.jpg','.jpeg','.gif','.bmp','.png')

import random
import string
my_origin_list = []
for i in xrange(10000):
    fname = ''.join(random.choice(string.lowercase) for i in range(random.randrange(10)))
    if random.getrandbits(1):
        fext = random.choice(good_list)
    else:
        fext = "." + ''.join(random.choice(string.lowercase) for i in range(3))

    my_origin_list.append((fname + fext, random.randrange(1000), fext))

And here we go

# Parand
def f1():
    return [e for e in my_origin_list if e[2] in good_list], [e for e in my_origin_list if not e[2] in good_list]

# dbr
def f2():
    a, b = list(), list()
    for e in my_origin_list:
        if e[2] in good_list:
            a.append(e)
        else:
            b.append(e)
    return a, b

# John La Rooy
def f3():
    a, b = list(), list()
    for e in my_origin_list:
        (b, a)[e[2] in good_list].append(e)
    return a, b

# Ants Aasma
def f4():
    l1, l2 = tee((e[2] in good_list, e) for e in my_origin_list)
    return [i for p, i in l1 if p], [i for p, i in l2 if not p]

# My personal way to do
def f5():
    a, b = zip(*[(e, None) if e[2] in good_list else (None, e) for e in my_origin_list])
    return list(filter(None, a)), list(filter(None, b))

# BJ Homer
def f6():
    return filter(lambda e: e[2] in good_list, my_origin_list), filter(lambda e: not e[2] in good_list, my_origin_list)

Using the cmpthese function, the best result is the dbr answer :

f1     204/s  --    -5%   -14%   -15%   -20%   -26%
f6     215/s     6%  --    -9%   -11%   -16%   -22%
f3     237/s    16%    10%  --    -2%    -7%   -14%
f4     240/s    18%    12%     2%  --    -6%   -13%
f5     255/s    25%    18%     8%     6%  --    -8%
f2     277/s    36%    29%    17%    15%     9%  --

Answer 4

If you insist on clever, you could take Winden's solution and just a bit spurious cleverness:

def splay(l, f, d=None):
  d = d or {}
  for x in l: d.setdefault(f(x), []).append(x)
  return d

Answer 5

I think a generalization of splitting a an iterable based on N conditions is handy

from collections import OrderedDict
def partition(iterable,*conditions):
    '''Returns a list with the elements that satisfy each of condition.
       Conditions are assumed to be exclusive'''
    d= OrderedDict((i,list())for i in range(len(conditions)))        
    for e in iterable:
        for i,condition in enumerate(conditions):
            if condition(e):
                d[i].append(e)
                break                    
    return d.values()

For instance:

ints,floats,other = partition([2, 3.14, 1, 1.69, [], None],
                              lambda x: isinstance(x, int), 
                              lambda x: isinstance(x, float),
                              lambda x: True)

print " ints: {}\n floats:{}\n other:{}".format(ints,floats,other)

 ints: [2, 1]
 floats:[3.14, 1.69]
 other:[[], None]

If the element may satisfy multiple conditions, remove the break.

Answer 6

Already quite a few solutions here, but yet another way of doing that would be -

anims = []
images = [f for f in files if (lambda t: True if f[2].lower() in IMAGE_TYPES else anims.append(t) and False)(f)]

Iterates over the list only once, and looks a bit more pythonic and hence readable to me.

>>> files = [ ('file1.jpg', 33L, '.jpg'), ('file2.avi', 999L, '.avi'), ('file1.bmp', 33L, '.bmp')]
>>> IMAGE_TYPES = ('.jpg','.jpeg','.gif','.bmp','.png')
>>> anims = []
>>> images = [f for f in files if (lambda t: True if f[2].lower() in IMAGE_TYPES else anims.append(t) and False)(f)]
>>> print '\n'.join([str(anims), str(images)])
[('file2.avi', 999L, '.avi')]
[('file1.jpg', 33L, '.jpg'), ('file1.bmp', 33L, '.bmp')]
>>>