What is wrong in my list comprehension?

[Peter Otten]

Hussein B wrote:

> Hey,
> I have a log file that doesn't contain the word "Haskell" at all, I'm
> just trying to do a little performance comparison:
> ++++++++++++++
> from datetime import time, timedelta, datetime
> start = datetime.now()
> print start
> lines = [line for line in file('/media/sda4/Servers/Apache/
> Tomcat-6.0.14/logs/catalina.out') if line.find('Haskell')]
> print 'Number of lines contains "Haskell" = ' +  str(len(lines))
> end = datetime.now()
> print end
> ++++++++++++++
> Well, the script is returning the whole file's lines number !!
> What is wrong in my logic?
> Thanks.

"""
find(...)
    S.find(sub [,start [,end]]) -> int

    Return the lowest index in S where substring sub is found,
    such that sub is contained within s[start:end].  Optional
    arguments start and end are interpreted as in slice notation.

    Return -1 on failure.
"""

a.find(b) returns -1 if b is no found. -1 evaluates to True in a boolean
context.

Use

[line for line in open(...) if line.find("Haskell") != -1]

or, better

[line for line in open(...) if "Haskell" in line]

to get the expected result.

Peter