Python Searching Nested Lists

Question

I have a nested list called players as shown below:

players = [["PlayerA", "10", "20"], ["PlayerB", "15", "30"], ["PlayerC", "15", "30"] ]

I want to be able to search by Player name (PlayerA, PlayerB, etc) using an input statement and if the search matches an item, then it prints out the entire item. How would I go about doing this, I am trying to learn different methods.

search = input("Please enter the players name")
for item in players:
  if item == search:
     print(item)
  else:
     print("item not found")

When I do the above it keeps printing item not found.

Many Thanks in Advance.

Answer 1

The reason that it's printing "item not found" is because you are comparing a sublist to the string to find, e.g.,

["PlayerA", "10", "20"] == "PlayerA"

which, of course, is false. You need to extract the name from each sublist.

One way you could do this is to use filter like so:

filter(lambda record: record[0] == "PlayerA", players)

This will return a list of the records with a 0th element matching "PlayerA".

Answer 2

if item == search:

This conditional won't succeed because item is ["PlayerA", "10", "20"], and search is "PlayerA". A list won't ever compare equal to a string.

Try comparing search against the first element of item specifically.

if item[0] == search:

Answer 3

Filter the players using a list comprehension, which compares the first item from each sub list in players with the player name from search:

players = [["PlayerA", "10", "20"], ["PlayerB", "15", "30"], ["PlayerC", "15", "30"] ]
search = input("Please enter the players name: ")

result = [player for player in players if player[0] == search]

if result == []: # or if not result
    print("item not found")
else:
    print(result)

Answer 4

You need to access to first element or your nested list. Like this:

for player in players:
    if player[0] == input:
        return player