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How to find the intersection and union of two lists in Python

Date:  |  Modified:  |  Tags: datastructures, python  |  6 Comments

My friend Bill had previously alerted me to the coolness of Python sets. However I hadn't found opportunity to use them until now. Here are three functions using sets to remove duplicate entries from a list, find the intersection of two lists, and find the union of two lists. Note, sets were introduced in Python 2.4, so Python 2.4 or later is required. Also, the items in the list must be hashable and order of the lists is not preserved.

For more information on Python sets, see the Library Reference.

""" NOTES:
      - requires Python 2.4 or greater
      - elements of the lists must be hashable
      - order of the original lists is not preserved
"""
def unique(a):
    """ return the list with duplicate elements removed """
    return list(set(a))

def intersect(a, b):
    """ return the intersection of two lists """
    return list(set(a) & set(b))

def union(a, b):
    """ return the union of two lists """
    return list(set(a) | set(b))

if __name__ == "__main__": 
    a = [0,1,2,0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
    b = [5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]
    print unique(a)
    print intersect(a, b)
    print union(a, b)

Results:
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
[8, 9, 5, 6, 7]
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14]

Comments


#1 Derek commented on :

You may also want to check out this: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/642763/python-intersection-of-two-lists]


#2 Eliot commented on :

Derek: Thanks. My method is simple, but it has its limitations.


#3 panta commented on :

thanks for the above - very helpful. do you also know a good solution for intersection & union without eliminating the duplicates beforehand? say I have

a = [1,1,2,4,4]

b = [1,4,4,4]

I would like to get

for intersection = [1,4,4]

and for union = [1,1,2,4,4,4].

Right now, I cannot think of anything better than two nested loops.

Thanks.


#4 Jey commented on :

Thank you. It was exactly what I was looking for!


#5 Dobes commented on :

@panta,

How about this:

def to_multiset(x):
    result = set()
    max_rep = len(x)
    for elt in x:
        for n in xrange(max_rep):
            n_elt = (elt,n)
            if n_elt not in result:
                result.add(n_elt)
                break
    return result

def from_multiset(x):
    return sorted([elt for elt,n in x])

def multi_union(a, b):
    aa = to_multiset(a)
    bb = to_multiset(b)
    return from_multiset(aa | bb)

def multi_intersect(a, b):
    aa = to_multiset(a)
    bb = to_multiset(b)
    return from_multiset(aa & bb)

a = [1, 1, 2, 4, 4]
b = [1, 4, 4, 4]

expected_intersection = [1, 4, 4]
expected_union = [1, 1, 2, 4, 4, 4]

print multi_union(a, b), expected_union
print multi_intersect(a, b), expected_intersection

#6 Francesco SkZ Mauro commented on :

nice, but set works well only for sorted list, or for list where you don't care about order of the elements.
set([1,3,5,7,9]+[2,4,6,8])={1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9}
set([1,2,3,7,8,9]+[3,4,5,6,7,8])={1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9}

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