diff lists

[Alex Martelli]

"Oliver Vecernik" <vecernik at aon.at> wrote in message
news:3AC1DD4E.4BA7D421 at aon.at...
> Hi,
>
> I've got following two lists:
>
> ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f']
> ['e', 'c', 'f']
>
> I'd like to have the result:
>
> ['a', 'b', 'd']
>
> The list need not to be ordered. ['d', 'a', 'b'] will also be ok. What
> is the most effective way to achive that result?

No doubt, it's a loop testing with the 'in' operator if one list is
pretty small, one using an auxiliary dictionary if they're more
substantial:

def smallExcluded(big, small):
    return [ x for x in big if x not in small ]

def anyExcluded(big, any):
    auxdict = {}
    for x in any: auxdict[x] = None
    return [ x for x in big if not auxdict.has_key(x) ]

There are also interesting approaches when the lists are known
to be sorted, but I guess those would be of purely theoretical
interest to you:-).


Alex