Find object in list that has attribute equal to some value (that meets any condition)

I've got list of objects. I want to find one (first or whatever) object in this list that has attribute (or method result - whatever) equal to value.

What's is the best way to find it?

Here's test case:

  class Test:
      def __init__(self, value):
          self.value = value
          
  import random

  value = 5
  
  test_list = [Test(random.randint(0,100)) for x in range(1000)]
                    
  # that I would do in Pascal, I don't believe it's anywhere near 'Pythonic'
  for x in test_list:
      if x.value == value:
          print "i found it!"
          break
  

I think using generators and reduce() won't make any difference because it still would be iterating through list.

ps.: Equation to value is just an example. Of course we want to get element which meets any condition.

Solution 1:

next((x for x in test_list if x.value == value), None)

This gets the first item from the list that matches the condition, and returns None if no item matches. It's my preferred single-expression form.

However,

for x in test_list:
    if x.value == value:
        print("i found it!")
        break

The naive loop-break version, is perfectly Pythonic -- it's concise, clear, and efficient. To make it match the behavior of the one-liner:

for x in test_list:
    if x.value == value:
        print("i found it!")
        break
else:
    x = None

This will assign None to x if you don't break out of the loop.

Solution 2:

Since it has not been mentioned just for completion. The good ol' filter to filter your to be filtered elements.

Functional programming ftw.

####### Set Up #######
class X:

    def __init__(self, val):
        self.val = val

elem = 5

my_unfiltered_list = [X(1), X(2), X(3), X(4), X(5), X(5), X(6)]

####### Set Up #######

### Filter one liner ### filter(lambda x: condition(x), some_list)
my_filter_iter = filter(lambda x: x.val == elem, my_unfiltered_list)
### Returns a flippin' iterator at least in Python 3.5 and that's what I'm on

print(next(my_filter_iter).val)
print(next(my_filter_iter).val)
print(next(my_filter_iter).val)

### [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6] Will Return: ###
# 5
# 5
# Traceback (most recent call last):
#   File "C:\Users\mousavin\workspace\Scripts\test.py", line 22, in <module>
#     print(next(my_filter_iter).value)
# StopIteration


# You can do that None stuff or whatever at this point, if you don't like exceptions.

I know that generally in python list comprehensions are preferred or at least that is what I read, but I don't see the issue to be honest. Of course Python is not an FP language, but Map / Reduce / Filter are perfectly readable and are the most standard of standard use cases in functional programming.

So there you go. Know thy functional programming.

filter condition list

It won't get any easier than this:

next(filter(lambda x: x.val == value,  my_unfiltered_list)) # Optionally: next(..., None) or some other default value to prevent Exceptions