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Checking for Substring Presence in a List of Strings
Aiming to identify occurrences of a substring within a list of strings, we encounter a limitation where simple substring checking falls short. As demonstrated in the provided example, searching for 'abc' in the list:
xs = ['abc-123', 'def-456', 'ghi-789', 'abc-456']
using the expression 'abc' in xs fails to capture items like 'abc-123' and 'abc-456' that contain the substring 'abc'.
Solution: Leveraging List Comprehension
To overcome this hurdle, list comprehension offers a powerful solution. By employing the any function, one can swiftly determine the presence of a substring within any item of the list. The following code snippet effectively accomplishes this:
if any("abc" in s for s in xs): # Perform desired actions
In this case, the for clause iterates over each string s in the list xs, checking whether 'abc' is present as a substring. If any string meets this condition, the any function returns True.
Retrieving All Matching Substrings
Should the objective be to extract all strings containing the specified substring, list comprehension again provides a convenient solution. The following code snippet fulfills this requirement:
matching = [s for s in xs if "abc" in s]
Here, the for clause selects each string that returns True for the presence of 'abc' and stores it in the matching list. This approach efficiently gathers all the desired items into a new list.
By harnessing the capabilities of list comprehension, we effectively address the challenge of identifying substring occurrences within a list of strings, enabling more comprehensive and accurate substring searches.
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