python remove duplicates from 2 lists

Question

I am trying to remove duplicates from 2 lists. so I wrote this function:

a = ["abc", "def", "ijk", "lmn", "opq", "rst", "xyz"]

b = ["ijk", "lmn", "opq", "rst", "123", "456", ]

for i in b:
    if i in a:
        print "found " + i
        b.remove(i)

print b

But I find that the matching items following a matched item does not get remove.

I get result like this:

found ijk
found opq
['lmn', 'rst', '123', '456']

but i expect result like this:

['123', '456']

How can I fix my function to do what I want?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Your problem seems to be that you're changing the list you're iterating over. Iterate over a copy of the list instead.

for i in b[:]:
    if i in a:
        b.remove(i)


>>> b
['123', '456']

But, How about using a list comprehension instead?

>>> a = ["abc", "def", "ijk", "lmn", "opq", "rst", "xyz"]
>>> b = ["ijk", "lmn", "opq", "rst", "123", "456", ]
>>> [elem for elem in b if elem not in a ]
['123', '456']

Answer 2

Here is what's going on. Suppose you have this list:

['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

and you are looping over every element in the list. Suppose you are currently at index position 1:

['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']
       ^
       |
   index = 1

...and you remove the element at index position 1, giving you this:

['a',      'c', 'd']
       ^
       |
    index 1

After removing the item, the other items slide to the left, giving you this:

['a', 'c', 'd']
       ^
       |
    index 1

Then when the loop runs again, the loop increments the index to 2, giving you this:

['a', 'c', 'd']
            ^ 
            |
         index = 2

See how you skipped over 'c'? The lesson is: never delete an element from a list that you are looping over.