Returning string matches between two lists for a given number of elements in a third list

Question

I've got a feeling that I will be told to go to the 'beginner's guide' or what have you but I have this code here that goes

does = ['my','mother','told','me','to','choose','the']
it = ['my','mother','told','me','to','choose','the']
work = []

while 5 > len(work):
    for nope in it:
        if nope in does:
            work.append(nope)

print (work)

And I get

['my', 'mother', 'told', 'me', 'to', 'choose', 'the']

Why is this? And how do I convince it to return

['my', 'mother', 'told', 'me']

Answer 1

You could try something like this:

for nope in it:
   if len(work) < 5 and nope in does:
       work.append(nope)
   else:
       break

The problem with your code is that it does the check of the work's length, after having looped through all the items of it and having added all of them that are in does.

Answer 2

You can do:

does = ['my','mother','told','me','to','choose','the']
it = ['my','mother','told','me','to','choose','the']
work = []
for nope in it:
    if nope in does:
        work.append(nope)
work = work[:4]
print (work)

It's just making the list without checking the length, then cutting it and leaving only the 4 first elements.