difflib

Found another standard library gem: difflib, which allows you to do intelligent string comparisons.

For example:

	import difflib
	def longest_palindrome(text):
	matcher = difflib.SequenceMatcher(None,text,text[::-1])
	length = len(text)
	a,b,k = matcher.find_longest_match(0,length-1,0,length-1)
	return text[a:a+k]

view raw palindrome.py hosted with ❤ by GitHub

will find the longest palindrome in a string, e.g.

>>> from palindrome import *
>>> longest_palindrome('asdfracecarasdf')
'racecar'
>>> longest_palindrome('asdffasdfaipreferpiasdfasdfa')
'aipreferpia'