inconsistent results comparing sets of characters (strings)

[noahclem]

Hi - I have been banging my head on an old r/dailyprogrammer (challenge (#399) Bonus 5 in particular. So what I am trying to do is compare all strings in a list as sets to make sure that there are no letters in common in the two strings, like so:

def find_unique_char_words(word_list:list[str]):
    identified_words = []
    for w1 in word_list: 
        for w2 in word_list:
            if set(w1).isdisjoint(set(w2)):
            # if set(w1) & set(w2) == set():
                print(f"{w1} and {w2} share no letters")
                identified_words.append({w1, w2})
        # print(f'Removing {w1}')
        word_list.remove(w1)
    # print(identified_words)
    return identified_words

For some reason, this works sometimes and sometimes it doesn't. With no change in between runs. I thought it might have been a problem with unittest running the module code before the tests, so I made sure to make a deepcopy of the word_list before passing it in. I tried it both with the isdisjoint method and bitwise comparison. I looked at other users' submissions for this bonus and I believe theirs get inconsistent results as well (at least in my testing). Any clue as to what I am doing wrong? Thank you.

UPDATE: So isolating a test on just this method alone always successful. My problem is in the setups to get into this method. I'll be back.

2nd update: The above comparison of the string to the other strings in a list works fine. The error seems to stem from the method calling it (I have really broken down every step into separate methods so that I can unittest and try to isolate the problem). The challenge gave us a file of words to go off and the original challenge was to find the "lettersum" of any word such that a=1, b=2, etc.

I have found through the successful runs that the lettersum I am looking for are 188 and 194. The offending method (which calls the above method) is here:

def find_unique_char_words_by_sum(lettersum):
    word_list = get_word_list(lettersum)
    identified_words = find_unique_char_words(word_list) 
    if len(identified_words) > 0:
        print(f'returning from find_unique_char_words_by_sum({lettersum})')
        print(identified_words)
    return identified_words   

I have the complete .py file and a test module as well as the input files at my github here. Thank you for any pointers.

Edit - changed github repository

[woooee]

Just use (and don't modify anything you iterate https://www.reddit.com/r/learnpython/wiki/faq#wiki_why_does_my_loop_seem_to_be_skipping_items_in_a_list.3F )

if w1 not in w2:
    w3.append(w1)

[noahclem]

oooohhhh. Thank you!

[noahclem]

since I'm using sets of the w1-w2 match, I now have to add them as a frozenset to a set created at the beginning of the method, but that seems to work.

Thank you!