[Tutor] Finding the differences between two lists

Justin Wendl justin.wendl at gmail.com
Thu Aug 25 20:56:02 CEST 2011


Hello,

Bare with me, as I am new to Python and a beginner programmer.
I am trying to compare two lists (not of the same length), and create a new
list of items that are -not- found in both lists.

Scenario: I have a list of MAC addresses that are known and good, and am
comparing it to a list of MACs found in a scan.  I want to weed out the
those which are unknown.  I am using IDLE (Python 2.7) on Windows, and all
files are in the same directory.

Code:

scanResults = open('scanResults.txt', 'r')
verifiedList = open('verifiedList.txt', 'r')
badMacs = []

for mac in scanResults:
  if mac not in verifiedList:
    print mac
    badMacs.append(mac)
  else:
    break


When I print 'badMacs', the results come up empty:
[]


Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Regards,
Justin
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