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[Tim Williams]

On 28/09/2007, Kevin Walzer <kw at codebykevin.com> wrote:
> I'm having a problem with searching a list. Here's my code:
>
> mylist = ['x11', 'x11-wm', 'x11-system']
>
> for line in mylist:
>        if 'x11' in line:
>                print line
>
> This results in the following output:
>
> x11
> x11-wm
> x11-system
>

That output is correct,  you are asking your script to print any list
item containing x11 when what you actually wanted was a list item that
is the string 'x11'

mylist = ['x11', 'x11-wm', 'x11-system']
for item in mylist:
      if item ==  'x11':
               print line

If there is only ever one 'x11' in the list you could also consider

print mylist.index('x11')

and

print mylist[mylist.index('x11')]

Also, before iterating the whole list check that 'x11' exists

if 'x11' in mylist:
    do stuff

and list comprehesions

print [x for x in mylist if x == 'x11']

HTH :)

Tim Williams