What is the most efficient way to compare similar contents in two lists?

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 3:46 AM, geremy condra <debatem1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 9:30 AM, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Ha! That *lengthy* thread started fairly soon after I joined this
>> list. It was highly... informative. I learned a bit about Python, and
>> a lot about python-list, from the posts there.
>
> So what are we talking about here? Reduce?

There was a huge thread about the removal of the cmp parameter to
sort() in Python 3.x. It was quite a wide-ranging discussion, touched
on many things. I think it got up to 90 posts in the first day, or
something. The main thing it taught me was that python-list is a high
traffic list; the next most important thing was who the courteous
posters are.

In contrast, the thread on NaNs in Python has taught me more about the
difference between floating point and 'real numbers' in a week or two
than all my previous computing training put together. Yep, this is an
interesting list.

Chris Angelico