Think about how well the above solutions scale as len(targets) increases. 1. Make "targets" a set, not a list. 2. Have *ONE* regex which includes a bracketed match for a generic target e.g. ([A-Z\s]+) 3. Do *ONE* regex search, not 1 per target 4. If successful, check if the bracketed gizmoid is in the set of targets.
It's not 100% apparent whether it is possible that there can be more than one target in the inappropriately named file2 (it is a string, isn't it?). If so, then write your own findall-like loop wrapped around steps 2 & 3 above. Compile the regex in advance. HTH, John -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list