[Tutor] all elements equal in tuple or list

[Bob Gailer]

At 08:06 AM 11/18/2004, Kent Johnson wrote:
>Here is one way to do it. It should work with any iterable (list, 
>tuple...) whose elements can be compared with ==. It compares the first 
>element of the iterable with each subsequent element. I thought of a 
>couple other ways to do it but I like this one because it doesn't create 
>any new data and it returns as soon as it finds a mismatch - it doesn't 
>need to compare against the whole list.
>
>Kent
>
>def test(vals):
>     if not vals: return True
>
>     i = iter(vals)
>     first = i.next()
>     for item in i:
>         if first != item:
>             return False
>     return True
>
>vals1 = [1, 1, 1, 1]
>vals2 = [1, 2, 1, 1]
>vals3 = [2, 1, 1, 1]
>
>print test(vals1)
>print test(vals2)
>print test(vals3)

Would not the following be a bit simpler?
def test(vals):
     if vals:
         for item in vals[1:]:
             if vals[0] != item:
                return False
     return True

Bob Gailer
bgailer at alum.rpi.edu
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