Searching a list of objects in Python

You can get a list of all matching elements with a list comprehension:

[x for x in myList if x.n == 30]  # list of all elements with .n==30

If you simply want to determine if the list contains any element that matches and do it (relatively) efficiently, you can do

def contains(list, filter):
    for x in list:
        if filter(x):
            return True
    return False

if contains(myList, lambda x: x.n == 3)  # True if any element has .n==3
    # do stuff

Simple, Elegant, and Powerful:

A generator expression in conjuction with a builtin… (python 2.5+)

any(x for x in mylist if x.n == 10)

Uses the Python any() builtin, which is defined as follows:

any(iterable) -> Return True if any element of the iterable is true. Equivalent to:

def any(iterable):
    for element in iterable:
        if element:
            return True
    return False

Just for completeness, let's not forget the Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work:

for i in list:
  if i.n == 5:
     # do something with it
     print "YAY! Found one!"