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

The following solution works for any order of list items and also supports both lists to be different length.

import numpy as np
def getMatches(a, b):
    matches = []
    unique_a = np.unique(a)
    unique_b = np.unique(b)
    for a in unique_a:
        for b in unique_b:
            if a == b:
                matches.append(a)
    return matches
print(getMatches([1, 2, 3, 4, 5], [9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 9])) # displays [5]
print(getMatches([1, 2, 3], [3, 4, 5, 1])) # displays [1, 3]