Check for presence of a sliced list in Python

Question

I want to write a function that determines if a sublist exists in a larger list.

list1 = [1,0,1,1,1,0,0]
list2 = [1,0,1,0,1,0,1]

#Should return true
sublistExists(list1, [1,1,1])

#Should return false
sublistExists(list2, [1,1,1])

Is there a Python function that can do this?

Answer 1

Let's get a bit functional, shall we? :)

def contains_sublist(lst, sublst):
    n = len(sublst)
    return any((sublst == lst[i:i+n]) for i in xrange(len(lst)-n+1))

Note that any() will stop on first match of sublst within lst - or fail if there is no match, after O(m*n) ops