comparing lists

[Mark McEahern]

Suppose I want to do a boolean comparison (equal or not equal) of two lists
case-insensitively and I don't care about order.  I can do this:

1.  Create temporary copies that are lowercased and use the in operator:

2.  Sort temporary copies, then then compare them.

Are there other options?  Is there a strong reason to prefer one approach
over the other?

Sample code below.

Thanks,

// mark

#! /usr/bin/env python

l = ['a', 'b', 'c']
m = ['C', 'B', 'A']

def lower(l):
    return [x.lower() for x in l]

def compare_with_in(l, m):
    assert(len(l) == len(m))
    t1 = lower(l)
    t2 = lower(m)
    for x in t1:
        assert(x in t2)

def compare_with_equals(l, m):
    t1 = lower(l)
    t2 = lower(m)
    t1.sort()
    t2.sort()
    assert(t1==t2)

compare_with_in(l, m)
compare_with_equals(l, m)