finding all sublists of list2 that are identical to list1

[Diez B. Roggisch]

> - Is there a more efficient way to do it? (Apart from building
> automata.)

Look into the shift-and algorithm for string-search- that should be much
faster. Its not trivial so I can't reproduce it right here out of my head,
but google helps.

> - Is there a more elegant/Pythonic way to write the function?

Yes. You should work much more with slicing, and compare whole sublists like
this:

-------snip-----------
hs = [0, 1, 5, 3, 2, 4, 5, 3, 2]
ne = [5, 3, 2]

def sublist(needle, haystack):
    hs_size = len(haystack)
    n_size = len(needle)

    if n_size > hs_size:
        return []
    elif hs_size == n_size and needle == haystack:
        return []
    else:
        res = []
        offset = 0
        sublist = haystack[offset:offset + n_size]
        while len(sublist) == n_size:
            if sublist == needle:
                res.append(offset)
            offset += 1
            sublist = haystack[offset:offset + n_size]
        return res

if __name__ == "__main__":
    print sublist(ne, hs)

-------snip-----------

-- 
Regards,

Diez B. Roggisch