How can I compare two lists in python and return matches

Question

I want to take two lists and find the values that appear in both.

a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
b = [9, 8, 7, 6, 5]

returnMatches(a, b)

would return

Answer 1

Do you want duplicates? If not maybe you should use sets instead:

>>> set([1, 2, 3, 4, 5]).intersection(set([9, 8, 7, 6, 5]))
set([5])