Iterating through multidimensional arrays in python

Question

I have a 2d array in the following format:

[[a,b,c], [a], [c,d], [e]]

My objective is to identify all sublists of length 1 and compare the element in that sublist to elements of other sublists. If the element exists, remove both elements from the list.

In this case we look for 'a' in the 2d array and eliminate 'a,b,c' and 'a' from the 2d array.

The result should be:

[[c,d], [e]]

My code is as follows:

templist = list1 #list1 is the list containing all elements
for i in templist:
    if (len(i) == 1):
        if(any(i[0] in templist)):
            templist.remove(i)
            templist.remove([sublist for sublist in mylist if i[0] in sublist])
return templist

On running this code, I get the error - 'bool' object is not iterable. What I am doing wrong and how I can fix my error?

The error message will tell you (and us) the line the error is on — Open AI - Opting Out
– Open AI - Opting Out, Commented May 3, 2017 at 14:50
any(i[0] in templist) doesn't make sense. i[0] in templist returns a boolean, and then you pass it to any which expects an iterable. — Open AI - Opting Out
– Open AI - Opting Out, Commented May 3, 2017 at 14:51
"My objective is to identify all sublists of length 1"-- but [e] is also a sublist of length 1? — Chris_Rands
– Chris_Rands, Commented May 3, 2017 at 14:52

arshovon · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-03 15:00:14Z

1

Here is a way how you can achieve this:

Python 3 solution:

ar = [["a","b","c"], ["a"], ["c","d"], ["e"]]
for pos,inner_ar in enumerate(ar):
    if len(inner_ar)==1:
        for i,inner_ar2 in enumerate(ar):
            if i!=pos and any(c for c in inner_ar2 for c in inner_ar):
                del ar[pos]
                del ar[i]
print(ar)

Output:

[['c', 'd'], ['e']]

N.B.: Improvement can be done.

answered May 3, 2017 at 15:00

arshovon

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1 Comment

Arat254 Over a year ago

Thank you for your answer. I will look into where I can make possible improvements to the code.

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