Searching through mutliple values in a list in python

Question

Suppose I have a list:

items = ['matt', 'zen', 'a', 'b', 'c', 'cat', 'dog']

if elem in items 
`if 'a' 'b' 'c' found then return 1

Whenever elem finds 'a', 'b', 'c' in the list and return a value. Is there a way to define the list in such a way? I don't want to have multiple if conditions (if it can be avoided).

Answer 1

To check if every item is in items

>>> items = ['matt', 'zen', 'a', 'b', 'c', 'cat', 'dog']
>>> {'a', 'b', 'c'}.issubset(items)
True

Inside a for loop, still taking advantage of the fast (O(1) amortized) lookup speeds of sets:

find = {'a', 'b', 'c'}
for elem in items:
    if elem in find:
        # do stuff