common problem - elegant solution sought

[Helmut Jarausch]

Hi,

I'm looking for an elegant solution of the following tiny but common problem.

I have a list of tuples  (Unique_ID,Date) both of which are strings.
I want to delete the tuple (element) with a given Unique_ID, but
I don't known the corresponding Date.

My straight forward solution is a bit lengthy, e.g.

L=[("a","070501"),("b","080115"),("c","071231")]
pos=-1
found=-1
for (Key,Date) in L :
     pos+= 1
     if  Key == "b" :
         found= pos
         break

if  found >= 0 :
     del L[found]

print L

Most probably there are much more elegant solutions.
Unfortunately, the index-list-method doesn't take an
additional function argument for the comparisons.

Many thanks for your hints,

Helmut Jarausch

Lehrstuhl fuer Numerische Mathematik
RWTH - Aachen University
D 52056 Aachen, Germany