Compare tuples of different lenght

[Peter Otten]

Jurgens de Bruin wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I have a list of tuples:
> 
> [(2,),(12,13),(2,3,4),(8,),(5,6),(7,8,9),]
> 
> I would like to compare all the tuples to each other and if one
> element if found two tuples the smallest tuples is removed from the
> list.
> 
> example if tuple 1 and tuple 3 are compare it should find that a
> single element in each are the same and tuple 1 should be removed
> resulting in
> 
> [(12,13),(2,3,4),(8,),(5,6),(7,8,9),]
> 
> the same for tuple 4 and 6 resulting in
> 
> [(12,13),(2,3,4),(5,6),(7,8,9),]
> 
> is this possible as I am having no success.
> 
> Thanks

from collections import Counter, defaultdict
from itertools import chain

def process_counter(sample):
    c = Counter()
    d = defaultdict(list)
    for items in sample:
        c.update(items)
        d[len(items)].append(items)

    result = []
    for cluster in sorted(d.values(), key=len):
        c.subtract(chain.from_iterable(cluster))
        for items in cluster:
            if not any(c[item] for item in items):
                result.append(items)

    result.sort(key=sample.index)
    return result

if __name__ == "__main__":
    for process in [process_counter]:
        print process.__name__

        sample = [(2,),(12,13),(2,3,4),(8,),(5,6),(7,8,9),]
        wanted = [(12,13),(2,3,4),(5,6),(7,8,9),]
        assert process(sample) == wanted


        sample = [(5,6), (6,7,8)]
        wanted = [(6,7,8)]
        got = process(sample)
        assert got == wanted

        sample = wanted = [(5, 6), (6, 7)]
        assert process(sample) == wanted

        sample = [(1,), (1, 2), (2, 3, 4)]
        wanted = [(2, 3, 4)]
        assert process(sample) == wanted