[ Merging nested lists with overlap ]

I have to merge nested lists which have an overlap. I keep thinking that there has to be an intelligent solution using list comprehensions and probably difflib, but I can't figure out how it should work. My lists look like this:

[['C', 'x', 'F'], ['A', 'D', 'E']]

and

[['x', 'F', 'G', 'x'], ['D', 'E', 'H', 'J']].

They are above another, like rows in a matrix. Therefore, they have overlap (in the form of

[['x', 'F'], ['D', 'E']]).

A merge should yield:

[['C', 'x', 'F', 'G', 'x'], ['A', 'D', 'E', 'H', 'J']].

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

You can try something like this.

list1 = [['C', 'x', 'F'], ['A', 'D', 'E']]
list2 = [['x', 'F', 'G', 'x'], ['D', 'E', 'H', 'J']]

for x in range(len(list1)):
    for element in list2[x]:
        if element not in list1[x]:
            list1[x].append(element)
    print list1[x]

Output:

['C', 'x', 'F', 'G']
['A', 'D', 'E', 'H', 'J']

I hope this helps you.