Find first element in a sequence that matches a predicate

To find the first element in a sequence seq that matches a predicate:

next(x for x in seq if predicate(x))

Or simply:

Python 2:

next(itertools.ifilter(predicate, seq))

Python 3:

next(filter(predicate, seq))

These will raise a StopIteration exception if the predicate does not match for any element.

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To return None if there is no such element:

next((x for x in seq if predicate(x)), None)

Or:

next(filter(predicate, seq), None)

You could use a generator expression with a default value and then next it:

next((x for x in seq if predicate(x)), None)

Although for this one-liner you need to be using Python >= 2.6.

This rather popular article further discusses this issue: Cleanest Python find-in-list function?.