Replace string with another string in the same list if string contains the other one

Question

A list has a mixture of full names and their short names. I want to expand the short names to their full name in a list like below. Eg. Pollard should be changed to Kieron Pollard and Starc should be changed to Mitchell Starc.

players = ['Pollard', 'Kieron Pollard', 'Mitchell Starc', 'Pollard', 'Starc']

print(players)
for i, s in enumerate(players):
    for p in players:
        if len(p) > len(s) and s in p: # Different string
            players[i] = p
print(players)

Output:

['Pollard', 'Kieron Pollard', 'Mitchell Starc', 'Pollard', 'Starc']
['Kieron Pollard', 'Kieron Pollard', 'Mitchell Starc', 'Kieron Pollard', 'Mitchell Starc']

The above method works great. I want to know if there is a better and a efficient way of doing the same.

thefourtheye · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-10 12:05:21Z

2

Just have the actual name and its replacement in a dictionary and using List Comprehension reconstruct the player names by looking up the names in the dictionary.

The second argument passed to names.get method is the default value to be returned if the first argument doesn't exist in the dictionary.

names = {'Pollard': 'Kieron Pollard', 'Starc': 'Mitchell Starc'}
print [names.get(player, player) for player in players]
# ['Kieron Pollard', 'Kieron Pollard', 'Mitchell Starc', 'Kieron Pollard', 'Mitchell Starc']

answered May 10, 2014 at 12:05

thefourtheye

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3 Comments

Kiwi Over a year ago

names = {p.split()[-1] : p for p in players if ' ' in p}

Raj Over a year ago

@Kiwi player names can be three words sometimes

Kiwi Over a year ago

If the short name is always the last one, it's ok: ' ' in p stands for at least two words, p.split()[-1] extracts the last one

Tom Ron · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-10 12:06:47Z

1

I would sort the players by their lengths and pass on the from the longest to the shortest - breaking the inside loop when ever getting to a containment.

Also, note that in the way you check the containment - "a" is in "ab". Make sure that this is what you want.

answered May 10, 2014 at 12:06

Tom Ron

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1 Comment

Raj Over a year ago

about the containment, yes I can be sure.

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