Help withselecting and returning lists

[Qbert16]

Hi, I'm quite new to python and am looking for help with lists inside lists

This is an example I'm trying to do. I have the following thesaurus set...

thesaurus = [
['item1', 'item2', 'item3', 'item4'],
['itema', itemb', 'itemc', 'itemd']
]

The real one for my assignment has many more lists inside lists, but I am trying to keep it simple to find the solution.

I need to be able to return each list out of the thesaurus if they have a word which matches to one or more of the words in the sublist.

For example if I have the words 'item1' and 'itemb', both the entire lists will be returned, but if I jsut have 'item2', the first list will be returned.

I have tried googleing, but I wasn't exactly sure what lists inside lists are called? Tried sublists, but couldn't find much. I can get the answer if there was only one list, but can't figure out how to select and return a single list from a group of lists.

This works for one list

thesaurus = ['itema', itemb', 'itemc', 'itemd']


def synonyms (search_word1):
if (search_word1) in thesaurus:
return thesaurus


For multiple lists in one group (the lists at the top of my post) I tried this:

def synonyms (search_word1, search_word2):
if (search_word1) or (search_word2) in thesaurus:
return ????certain list within thesaurus, don't know syntax.


Any help would be greatly appreciated!

(also I'm not sure why the indenting isn't showing when I submit this)

[bvdet]

You need to iterate on the elements of thesaurus to see if word is in one of the elements. It's not very efficient with large lists. [code=Python]thesaurus = [['item1', 'item2', 'item3', 'item4'], \
['itema', 'itemb', 'itemc', 'itemd']]

def synonyms(search _word):
for item in thesaurus:
if search_word in item:
return item
[/code]

>>> print synonyms('item2 ')
['item1', 'item2', 'item3', 'item4']
>>>

A possible alternative would be a dictionary. The dictionary could have a key for each word in each sublist. The data would need more memory, but the lookup would be faster.[code=Python]
>>>
>>> dd = {}
>>> for item in thesaurus:
... for word in item:
... dd[word]=item
...
>>> dd.get('item1', None)
['item1', 'item2', 'item3', 'item4']
>>> print dd.get('some_wo rd', None)
None
>>> for key in dd:
... print '%s = %s' % (key, dd[key])
...
item2 = ['item1', 'item2', 'item3', 'item4']
item3 = ['item1', 'item2', 'item3', 'item4']
item1 = ['item1', 'item2', 'item3', 'item4']
item4 = ['item1', 'item2', 'item3', 'item4']
itemb = ['itema', 'itemb', 'itemc', 'itemd']
itemc = ['itema', 'itemb', 'itemc', 'itemd']
itema = ['itema', 'itemb', 'itemc', 'itemd']
itemd = ['itema', 'itemb', 'itemc', 'itemd']
>>>[/code]I am sure there is a better way. HTH, bv

[Laharl]

These would probably be called nested lists. A Python feature known as list comprehension can solve this in a line or two, believe it or not, or you can use a loop to iterate over each list and check each one for the item you're looking for.

To get your indenting back, use [CODE] tags.

[Qbert16]

Thanks a lot, the first code worked fine, thanks a lot! I didn't understand all of the second part you posted, I think it's a little beyond me for now, only been going 4 weeks.