Python – Count Strings with substring String List

Last Updated : 13 Apr, 2023

The classical problem that can be handled quite easily by python and has been also dealt with many times is finding if a string is substring of other. But sometimes, one wishes to extend this on list of strings and find how many strings satisfy condition, and hence then requires to traverse the entire container and perform the generic algorithm. Lets discuss certain ways to perform this task.

Method #1 : Using list comprehension + len() List comprehension is an elegant ways to perform any particular task as it increases readability in a long run. This task can be performed using naive method and hence can be reduced to list comprehension as well. The len() is used to compute length of list.

Python3

# Python code to demonstrate 
# Count Strings with substring String List
# using list comprehension + len()
 
# initializing list 
test_list = ['GeeksforGeeks', 'Geeky', 'Computers', 'Algorithms']
 
# printing original list 
print ("The original list is : " + str(test_list))
 
# initializing substring
subs = 'Geek'
 
# using list comprehension + len()
# Count Strings with substring String List
res = len([i for i in test_list if subs in i])
 
# printing result 
print ("All strings count with given substring are : " + str(res))

Output :

The original list is : ['GeeksforGeeks', 'Geeky', 'Computers', 'Algorithms']
All strings count with given substring are : 2

Time Complexity: O(n), where n is the number of elements in the list “test_list”.
Auxiliary Space: O(n), where n is the number of elements in the list “test_list”.

Method #2 : Using filter() + lambda + len() This function can also perform this task of finding the strings with the help of lambda. It just filters out all the strings matching the particular substring and then adds it in a new list. The len() is used to compute length of list.

Python3

# Python code to demonstrate 
# Count Strings with substring String List
# using filter() + lambda + len()
 
# initializing list 
test_list = ['GeeksforGeeks', 'Geeky', 'Computers', 'Algorithms']
 
# printing original list 
print ("The original list is : " + str(test_list))
 
# initializing substring
subs = 'Geek'
 
# using filter() + lambda + len()
# Count Strings with substring String List
res = len(list(filter(lambda x: subs in x, test_list)))
 
# printing result 
print ("All strings count with given substring are : " + str(res))

Output :

The original list is : ['GeeksforGeeks', 'Geeky', 'Computers', 'Algorithms']
All strings count with given substring are : 2

Time Complexity: O(n) where n is the number of elements in the string list. The sum() + generator expression is used to perform the task and it takes O(n) time.
Auxiliary Space: O(1) constant additional space needed

Method #3 : Using find() method

Approach

Initiated a for loop to traverse the list
Used the find() method to check whether the substring is present in each element of list
If present increment the res variable
Display the res variable

Python3

# Python code to demonstrate
# Count Strings with substring String List
 
# initializing list
test_list = ['GeeksforGeeks', 'Geeky', 'Computers', 'Algorithms']
 
# printing original list
print ("The original list is : " + str(test_list))
 
# initializing substring
subs = 'Geek'
 
 
# Count Strings with substring String List
res = 0
for i in test_list:
    if i.find(subs)!=-1:
        res+=1
 
# printing result
print ("All strings count with given substring are : " + str(res))

Output

The original list is : ['GeeksforGeeks', 'Geeky', 'Computers', 'Algorithms']
All strings count with given substring are : 2

Time Complexity : O(N)
Auxiliary Space : O(1)

Method #4 : Using operator.contains() method

Approach:

Initiated a for loop to traverse the list
Used the operator.contains() method to check whether the substring is present in each element of list
If present increment the res variable
Display the res variable

Python3

# Python code to demonstrate
# Count Strings with substring String List
 
# initializing list
test_list = ['GeeksforGeeks', 'Geeky', 'Computers', 'Algorithms']
 
# printing original list
print ("The original list is : " + str(test_list))
 
# initializing substring
subs = 'Geek'
 
 
# Count Strings with substring String List
res = 0
import operator
for i in test_list:
    if operator.contains(i,subs):
        res+=1
 
# printing result
print ("All strings count with given substring are : " + str(res))

Output

The original list is : ['GeeksforGeeks', 'Geeky', 'Computers', 'Algorithms']
All strings count with given substring are : 2

Time Complexity : O(N)
Auxiliary Space : O(1)

Method #5: Using list comprehension + count()

This method uses list comprehension to generate a list of 1s and 0s based on whether the substring exists in each string. Then, sum() function is used to count the number of 1s in the list.

Python3

# Python code to demonstrate
# Count Strings with substring String List
 
# initializing list
test_list = ['GeeksforGeeks', 'Geeky', 'Computers', 'Algorithms']
 
# printing original list
print ("The original list is : " + str(test_list))
 
# initializing substring
subs = 'Geek'
 
# Count Strings with substring String List
res = sum(1 for s in test_list if s.count(subs)>0)
 
# printing result
print ("All strings count with given substring are : " + str(res))

Output

The original list is : ['GeeksforGeeks', 'Geeky', 'Computers', 'Algorithms']
All strings count with given substring are : 2

Time complexity: O(n*m), where n is the length of the list and m is the length of the longest string in the list.
Auxiliary space: O(1) (excluding the space used to store the list)

Method #6: reduce() function from functools module:

Algorithm:

Import reduce() function from functools module.
Initialize the list of strings and the substring.
Define a lambda function to check if the substring is present in the string.
Use reduce() function to count the number of strings that contain the substring.
Print the count of such strings.

Python3

from functools import reduce
 
test_list = ['GeeksforGeeks', 'Geeky', 'Computers', 'Algorithms']
subs = 'Geek'
# printing original list
print ("The original list is : " + str(test_list))
  
count = reduce(lambda x, y: x + 1 if subs in y else x, test_list, 0)
# printing result
print("All strings count with given substring are :", count)
#This code is contributed by Jyothi pinjala.

Output

The original list is : ['GeeksforGeeks', 'Geeky', 'Computers', 'Algorithms']
All strings count with given substring are : 2

Time complexity: O(n), where n is the number of strings in the input list. This is because we need to iterate over each string in the list to check if the substring is present.

Space complexity: O(1). This is because we are only storing a few variables like the input list, substring, and the count of strings containing the substring. No new list or data structure is being created.

Method 7: using for loop

Initialize the input list of strings test_list and print it.
Initialize the substring subs.
Initialize a counter variable count to zero.
Use a for loop to iterate through each string in test_list.
Check if the substring subs is present in the current string.
If it is, increment the counter variable count.
After the loop is finished, print the value of count.

Python3

# Python code to demonstrate 
# Count Strings with substring String List
# using for loop
 
# initializing list 
test_list = ['GeeksforGeeks', 'Geeky', 'Computers', 'Algorithms']
 
# printing original list 
print("The original list is: " + str(test_list))
 
# initializing substring
subs = 'Geek'
 
# using for loop
count = 0
for string in test_list:
    if subs in string:
        count += 1
 
# printing result 
print("All strings count with given substring are: " + str(count))

Output

The original list is: ['GeeksforGeeks', 'Geeky', 'Computers', 'Algorithms']
All strings count with given substring are: 2

time complexity of this method is O(nk), where n is the length of the list and k is the length of the substring. The auxiliary space required is O(1) because we are only using a counter variable.