python list每个重复元素保留一次,在Python中需要保留重复项时比较两个列表中的元素...

I'd like to compare two lists. I'd like to find elements in the first list that don't have a corresponding entry in the second list (order doesn't matter):

a = ['hi', 'hi', 'bye', 'hi']

b = ['hi', 'hi', 'bye']

So I would like the output to be

c = ['hi']

since the first list has an extra 'hi' in it that doesn't appear in the second list.

If I do one of the usual techniques, I can use a list comprehension:

[x for x in a if x not in b]

which gives me [], which is not what I want.

Things I've tried involve using the set operator, which have the same outcome, since that operation reduces the members of the list to uniqueness.

This seems like a simple operation. Do I need to enumerate each element in the lists first, and create tuples to compare? Do I need to put them into a Counter dict? All this sounds a little bit like overkill when I just want to a simple comparison of the elements in a list!

解决方案

Counter objects support multi-set operations:

>>> from collections import Counter

>>> a = ['hi', 'hi', 'bye', 'hi']

>>> b = ['hi', 'hi', 'bye']

>>> Counter(a) - Counter(b)

Counter({'hi': 1})

Rebuilding a list from the Counter:

>>> list(counter.elements())

['hi']