Get the first item from an iterable that matches a condition

Question

I would like to get the first item from a list matching a condition. It\'s important that the resulting method not process the entire list, which could be quite large. For e

Answer 1

The itertools module contains a filter function for iterators. The first element of the filtered iterator can be obtained by calling next() on it:

from itertools import ifilter

print ifilter((lambda i: i > 3), range(10)).next()

Answer 2

Oneliner:

thefirst = [i for i in range(10) if i > 3][0]

If youre not sure that any element will be valid according to the criteria, you should enclose this with try/except since that [0] can raise an IndexError.

Answer 3

As a reusable, documented and tested function

def first(iterable, condition = lambda x: True):
    """
    Returns the first item in the `iterable` that
    satisfies the `condition`.

    If the condition is not given, returns the first item of
    the iterable.

    Raises `StopIteration` if no item satysfing the condition is found.

    >>> first( (1,2,3), condition=lambda x: x % 2 == 0)
    2
    >>> first(range(3, 100))
    3
    >>> first( () )
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    ...
    StopIteration
    """

    return next(x for x in iterable if condition(x))

Version with default argument

@zorf suggested a version of this function where you can have a predefined return value if the iterable is empty or has no items matching the condition:

def first(iterable, default = None, condition = lambda x: True):
    """
    Returns the first item in the `iterable` that
    satisfies the `condition`.

    If the condition is not given, returns the first item of
    the iterable.

    If the `default` argument is given and the iterable is empty,
    or if it has no items matching the condition, the `default` argument
    is returned if it matches the condition.

    The `default` argument being None is the same as it not being given.

    Raises `StopIteration` if no item satisfying the condition is found
    and default is not given or doesn't satisfy the condition.

    >>> first( (1,2,3), condition=lambda x: x % 2 == 0)
    2
    >>> first(range(3, 100))
    3
    >>> first( () )
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    ...
    StopIteration
    >>> first([], default=1)
    1
    >>> first([], default=1, condition=lambda x: x % 2 == 0)
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    ...
    StopIteration
    >>> first([1,3,5], default=1, condition=lambda x: x % 2 == 0)
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    ...
    StopIteration
    """

    try:
        return next(x for x in iterable if condition(x))
    except StopIteration:
        if default is not None and condition(default):
            return default
        else:
            raise

Answer 4

For older versions of Python where the next built-in doesn't exist:

(x for x in range(10) if x > 3).next()

Answer 5

Damn Exceptions!

I love this answer. However, since next() raise a StopIteration exception when there are no items, i would use the following snippet to avoid an exception:

a = []
item = next((x for x in a), None)

---

For example,

a = []
item = next(x for x in a)

Will raise a StopIteration exception;

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
StopIteration

Answer 6

You could also use the argwhere function in Numpy. For example:

i) Find the first "l" in "helloworld":

import numpy as np
l = list("helloworld") # Create list
i = np.argwhere(np.array(l)=="l") # i = array([[2],[3],[8]])
index_of_first = i.min()

ii) Find first random number > 0.1

import numpy as np
r = np.random.rand(50) # Create random numbers
i = np.argwhere(r>0.1)
index_of_first = i.min()

iii) Find the last random number > 0.1

import numpy as np
r = np.random.rand(50) # Create random numbers
i = np.argwhere(r>0.1)
index_of_last = i.max()