Most clear, Pythonic, reliable, and fastest way to check if a string contains words from a list of lists

Question

I am looking for the most clear, Pythonic, and fastest way to check if a string contains words from a list of lists

This is what I came up so far

introStrings = ['introduction:' , 'case:' , 'introduction' , 'case' ]
backgroundStrins = ['literature:' , 'background:',  'Related:' , 'literature' , 'background',  'related' ]
methodStrings = [ 'methods:' , 'method:', 'techniques:', 'methodology:' , 'methods' , 'method', 'techniques', 'methodology' ]
resultStrings = [ 'results:', 'result:', 'experimental:', 'experiments:', 'experiment:', 'results', 'result', 'experimental', 'experiments', 'experiment']
discussioStrings = [ 'discussion:' , 'Limitations:'  , 'discussion' , 'limitations']
conclusionStrings = ['conclusion:' , 'conclusions:', 'concluding:' , 'conclusion' , 'conclusions', 'concluding' ]

allStrings = [ introStrings, backgroundStrins, methodStrings, resultStrings, discussioStrings, conclusionStrings ]

testtt = 'this may thod be in techniques ever material and methods'

for item in allStrings:
    for word in testtt.split():
        if word in item:
            print('yes')
            break

This code pretty looks for all combinations. It's a nested for loop. It it's not quite clear to figure out on first glance.

I am wondering if there is a better way.

Answer 1

It would be more Pythonic to use any() with a chained list comprehension:

print any(word in sublist for word in testtt.split() for sublist in allStrings)

However this will just return true/false; it won't identify which word was found in which sublist. You can print the specific matches with this list comprehension:

print [(word,sublist) for word in testtt.split() for sublist in allStrings if word in sublist]

Your code is a bit wasteful by calculating testtt.split() more than once.

Answer 2

I am looking for the most clear, Pythonic, and fastest way to check if a string contains words from a list of lists

First, I'd flatten the lists

all_strings = [*intro, *back, *methods, ...] # You get the idea

(Alternatively, using a nested list comprehension)

all_strings = [word for list in [intro, back, ...] for word in list] # if you're into that

Next, split the string:

string_words = a_string.split()

Finally, just look up words:

found = [w for w in string_words if w in all_strings]

That's quite pythonic, not very sure about speed or reliability

Answer 3

What I can get is by use of chain and any :

resultStrings = [
    "results:",
    "result:",
    "experimental:",
    "experiments:",
    "experiment:",
    "results",
    "result",
    "experimental",
    "experiments",
    "experiment",
]
conclusionStrings = [
    "conclusion:",
    "conclusions:",
    "concluding:",
    "conclusion",
    "conclusions",
    "concluding",
]

allStrings = [resultStrings, conclusionStrings]
testtt = "this may thod be in techniques ever material and methods"

from itertools import chain
string_set = set(chain(*allStrings))
any(i in string_set for i in testtt.split())

Though set need some space, it can improve efficiency. Thanks Peter Wood.

Answer 4

Using itertools

import itertools
merged = list(itertools.chain.from_iterable(allStrings))
[print(x) for x in testtt.split() if x in merged]