How to Compare Two Strings for Identical Characters in Python

Student asked how to determine whether the elements in two strings a and b are identical, outputting True if they match and False otherwise.

Coach’s analysis: the task is to check if the sets of characters are the same, treating repeated characters only once.

Method 1 – Using a set

a = "abcd31d111111"
b = "3acdb1"
print(set(a) == set(b))
# >>> True

Method 2 – Using all() with length check

a = "abcd31d111111"
b = "3acdb1"
long_ = a if len(a) > len(b) else b
short_ = a if len(a) < len(b) else b
result = all([short_.count(x) for x in long_])
print(result)
# >>> True

The all() approach first selects the longer and shorter strings, then verifies that every character in the longer string appears in the shorter one.