Searching a file for multiple strings

[Tim Chase]

> I'm fairly new with python and am trying to build a fairly simple
> search script.  Ultimately, I'm wanting to search a directory of files
> for multiple user inputted keywords.  I've already written a script
> that can search for a single string through multiple files, now I just
> need to adapt it to multiple strings.
> 
> I found a bit of code that's a good start:
> 
> import re
> test = open('something.txt', 'r').read()
> 
> list = ['a', 'b', 'c']
> 
> foundit = re.compile('|'.join(re.escape(target) for target in list))
> if foundit.findall(test):
>     print 'yes!'
> 
> The only trouble with this is it returns yes! if it finds any of the
> search items, and I only want a return when it finds all of them.  Is
> there a bit of code that's similar that I can use?

[insert standard admonition about using "list" as a variable 
name, masking the built-in "list"]
Unless there's a reason to use regular expressions, you could 
simply use

   test = open("something.txt").read()
   items = ['a', 'b', 'c']
   if all(s in test for s in items):
     print "Yes!"
   else:
     print "Sorry, bub"

This presumes python2.5 in which the "all()" function was added. 
  Otherwise in pre-2.5, you could do

   for s in items:
     if s not in test:
       print "Sorry, bub"
       break
   else:
     print "Yeparoo"

(note that the "else" goes with the "for", not the "if")

-tkc