splitting a list into two distinct sublists
splitting a list into two distinct sublists splitting a list into two distinct sublists Let's say you have the following list, or string: 1 ababcdcd How would you find the point between abab and cdcd ? i.e the point where the substrings contain distinct characters from one another? 1 s = "ababcdcd" 2 for i in range ( 1 , len ( s )): 3 if not set ( s [: i ]) & set ( s [ i :]): 4 print ( s [: i ], s [ i :]) 5 break This solution converts the substrings into sets, and & them. When the intersection of both sets is empty, both substrings are distinct. The solution can also be expressed as a generator expression : 1 s = "ababcdcd" 2 gen = (( s [: i ], s [ i :]) for i in range ( 1 , len ( s )) if not set ( s [: i ]) & set ( s [ i :])) 3 print ( next ( gen )) Getting all distinct substrings Printing out all distinct substrings is also straightforward: 1 s = "ababcdcdefefef