Appending an id to a list if not already present in a string

Question

I am trying to check if id is in a list and append the id only if its not in the list using the below code..however I see that the id is getting appended even though id is alre

Answer 1

If you really don't want to change your structure, or at least create a copy of it containing the same data (e.g. make a class property with a setter and getter that read from/write to that string behind the scenes), then you can use a regular expression to check if an item is in that "list" at any given time, and if not, append it to the "list" as a separate element.

if not re.match("\b{}\b".format(348521), some_list[0]): some_list.append(348521)

This is probably faster than converting it to a set every time you want to check if an item is in it. But using set as others have suggested here is a million times better.

Answer 2

Your list just contains a string. Convert it to integer IDs:

L = ['350882 348521 350166\r\n']

ids = [int(i) for i in L[0].strip().split()]
print(ids)
id = 348521
if id not in ids:
    ids.append(id)
print(ids)
id = 348522
if id not in ids:
    ids.append(id)
print(ids)
# Turn it back into your odd format
L = [' '.join(str(id) for id in ids) + '\r\n']
print(L)

Output:

[350882, 348521, 350166]
[350882, 348521, 350166]
[350882, 348521, 350166, 348522]
['350882 348521 350166 348522\r\n']