Preferred way to check if a line starts with a string from list?

Question

I'm trying to to sort through a file line by line, comparing the beginning with a string from a list, like so:

for line in lines:
    skip_line = True
    for tag in tags:
        if line.startswith(tag) is False:
            continue
        else:
            skip_line = False
            break
    if skip_line is False:
        #do stuff

While the code works just fine, I'm wondering if there's a neater way to check for this condition. I have looked at any() , but it seems to just give me the possibility to check if any of my lines start with a fixed tag (not eliminating the for loop needed to loop through my list.

So, essentially I'm asking this:
Is there a better, sleeker option than using a for loop to iterate over my tags list to check if the current line starts with one of its elements?

As Paradox pointed out in his answer: Using a dictionary to lookup if the string exists has O(1) complexity and actually makes the entire code look a lot cleaner, while being faster than looping through a list. Like so:

tags = {'ticker':0, 'orderBook':0, 'tradeHistory':0}
for line in lines:
    if line.split('\t')[0] in tags:
        #do stuff

Answer 1

If you're determined to pull this down into a one-liner, you can use a generator:

tagged_lines = (line for line in lines if any(line.startswith(tag) for tag in tags))
for line in tagged_lines:
    # Do something with line here 

Of course, how readable this is is a different question.

You've probably seen syntax like [x*x for x in range(10)] before, but by swapping the [] for () , we instead generate each item only when it's asked for.

Answer 2

Instead of iterating over your tags list, you can put all your tags inside a HashMap and do a simple lookup like myMap.exists("word"). This would be much faster that iterating through your tags list and works in O(1) complexity. In python its actually a dictionary data structure. http://progzoo.net/wiki/Python:Hash_Maps

Answer 3

This has been asked before. Take a look at this post for more solutions. I would flag this post as a duplicate but I still do not have the reputation.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/10477481/5016492

You'll need to modify the regular expression so that it looks at the start of the line. Something like this should work for you '^tag' .

Answer 4

In fact any() will do the job

Looping each line

for line in lines:
     tagged = any(lambda: line.startswith(y), tags)

Any list start with any tag

any(lambda x: any(lambda y: x.startswith(y), tags), lines)

Filter tagged lines

filter(lambda x: any(lambda y: x.startswith(y), tags), lines)

Answer 5

How about a combination off any() and filter() like in this example:

# use your data here ...
mytags = ('hello', 'world')
mylines = ('hello friend', 'you are great', 'world is cruel')

result = filter(lambda line: any(map(lambda tag: line.startswith(tag), mytags)), mylines)
print result