I need the following function:

Input: a list

Output:

• True if all elements in the input list evaluate as equal to each other using the standard equality operator;
• False otherwise.

Performance: of course, I prefer not to incur any unnecessary overhead.

I feel it would be best to:

• iterate through the list
• compare adjacent elements
• and AND all the resulting Boolean values

But I’m not sure what’s the most Pythonic way to do that.

The lack of short-circuit feature only hurts on a long input (over ~50 elements) that have unequal elements early on. If this occurs often enough (how often depends on how long the lists might be), the short-circuit is required. The best short-circuit algorithm seems to be @KennyTM checkEqual1. It pays, however, a significant cost for this:

• up to 20x in performance nearly-identical lists
• up to 2.5x in performance on short lists

If the long inputs with early unequal elements don’t happen (or happen sufficiently rarely), short-circuit isn’t required. Then, by far the fastest is @Ivo van der Wijk solution.

General method:

def checkEqual1(iterator):
    iterator = iter(iterator)
    try:
        first = next(iterator)
    except StopIteration:
        return True
    return all(first == rest for rest in iterator)

One-liner:

def checkEqual2(iterator):
   return len(set(iterator)) <= 1

Also one-liner:

def checkEqual3(lst):
   return lst[1:] == lst[:-1]

The difference between the 3 versions are that:

1. In checkEqual2 the content must be hashable.
2. checkEqual1 and checkEqual2 can use any iterators, but checkEqual3 must take a sequence input, typically concrete containers like a list or tuple.
3. checkEqual1 stops as soon as a difference is found.
4. Since checkEqual1 contains more Python code, it is less efficient when many of the items are equal in the beginning.
5. Since checkEqual2 and checkEqual3 always perform O(N) copying operations, they will take longer if most of your input will return False.
6. For checkEqual2 and checkEqual3 it’s harder to adapt comparison from a == b to a is b.

timeit result, for Python 2.7 and (only s1, s4, s7, s9 should return True)

s1 = [1] * 5000
s2 = [1] * 4999 + [2]
s3 = [2] + [1]*4999
s4 = [set([9])] * 5000
s5 = [set([9])] * 4999 + [set([10])]
s6 = [set([10])] + [set([9])] * 4999
s7 = [1,1]
s8 = [1,2]
s9 = []

we get

      | checkEqual1 | checkEqual2 | checkEqual3  | checkEqualIvo | checkEqual6502 |
|-----|-------------|-------------|--------------|---------------|----------------|
| s1  | 1.19   msec | 348    usec | 183     usec | 51.6    usec  | 121     usec   |
| s2  | 1.17   msec | 376    usec | 185     usec | 50.9    usec  | 118     usec   |
| s3  | 4.17   usec | 348    usec | 120     usec | 264     usec  | 61.3    usec   |
|     |             |             |              |               |                |
| s4  | 1.73   msec |             | 182     usec | 50.5    usec  | 121     usec   |
| s5  | 1.71   msec |             | 181     usec | 50.6    usec  | 125     usec   |
| s6  | 4.29   usec |             | 122     usec | 423     usec  | 61.1    usec   |
|     |             |             |              |               |                |
| s7  | 3.1    usec | 1.4    usec | 1.24    usec | 0.932   usec  | 1.92    usec   |
| s8  | 4.07   usec | 1.54   usec | 1.28    usec | 0.997   usec  | 1.79    usec   |
| s9  | 5.91   usec | 1.25   usec | 0.749   usec | 0.407   usec  | 0.386   usec   |

Note:

# http://stackoverflow.com/q/3844948/
def checkEqualIvo(lst):
    return not lst or lst.count(lst[0]) == len(lst)

# http://stackoverflow.com/q/3844931/
def checkEqual6502(lst):
    return not lst or [lst[0]]*len(lst) == lst

A solution faster than using set() that works on sequences (not iterables) is to simply count the first element. This assumes the list is non-empty (but that’s trivial to check, and decide yourself what the outcome should be on an empty list)

x.count(x[0]) == len(x)

some simple benchmarks:

>>> timeit.timeit('len(set(s1))<=1', 's1=[1]*5000', number=10000)
1.4383411407470703
>>> timeit.timeit('len(set(s1))<=1', 's1=[1]*4999+[2]', number=10000)
1.4765670299530029
>>> timeit.timeit('s1.count(s1[0])==len(s1)', 's1=[1]*5000', number=10000)
0.26274609565734863
>>> timeit.timeit('s1.count(s1[0])==len(s1)', 's1=[1]*4999+[2]', number=10000)
0.25654196739196777

The simplest and most elegant way is as follows:

all(x==myList[0] for x in myList)

(Yes, this even works with the empty list! This is because this is one of the few cases where python has lazy semantics.)

Regarding performance, this will fail at the earliest possible time, so it is asymptotically optimal.

A set comparison work:

len(set(the_list)) == 1

Using set removes all duplicate elements.

You can convert the list to a set. A set cannot have duplicates. So if all the elements in the original list are identical, the set will have just one element.

if len(sets.Set(input_list)) == 1
// input_list has all identical elements.

For what it’s worth, this came up on the python-ideas mailing list recently. It turns out that there is an itertools recipe for doing this already:¹

def all_equal(iterable):
    "Returns True if all the elements are equal to each other"
    g = groupby(iterable)
    return next(g, True) and not next(g, False)

Supposedly it performs very nicely and has a few nice properties.

1. Short-circuits: It will stop consuming items from the iterable as soon as it finds the first non-equal item.
2. Doesn’t require items to be hashable.
3. It is lazy and only requires O(1) additional memory to do the check.

^{1In other words, I can’t take the credit for coming up with the solution — nor can I take credit for even finding it.}

Here are two simple ways of doing this

using set()

When converting the list to a set, duplicate elements are removed. So if the length of the converted set is 1, then this implies that all the elements are the same.

len(set(input_list))==1

Here is an example

>>> a = ['not', 'the', 'same']
>>> b = ['same', 'same', 'same']
>>> len(set(a))==1  # == 3
False
>>> len(set(b))==1  # == 1
True

using all()

This will compare (equivalence) the first element of the input list to every other element in the list. If all are equivalent True will be returned, otherwise False will be returned.

all(element==input_list[0] for element in input_list)

Here is an example

>>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> b = [1, 1, 1, 1, 1]
>>> all(number==a[0] for number in a)
False
>>> all(number==b[0] for number in b)
True

P.S If you are checking to see if the whole list is equivalent to a certain value, you can suibstitue the value in for input_list[0].

This is another option, faster than len(set(x))==1 for long lists (uses short circuit)

def constantList(x):
    return x and [x[0]]*len(x) == x

This is a simple way of doing it:

result = mylist and all(mylist[0] == elem for elem in mylist)

This is slightly more complicated, it incurs function call overhead, but the semantics are more clearly spelled out:

def all_identical(seq):
    if not seq:
        # empty list is False.
        return False
    first = seq[0]
    return all(first == elem for elem in seq)

Check if all elements equal to the first.

np.allclose(array, array[0])

Doubt this is the “most Pythonic”, but something like:

>>> falseList = [1,2,3,4]
>>> trueList = [1, 1, 1]
>>> 
>>> def testList(list):
...   for item in list[1:]:
...     if item != list[0]:
...       return False
...   return True
... 
>>> testList(falseList)
False
>>> testList(trueList)
True

would do the trick.

If you’re interested in something a little more readable (but of course not as efficient,) you could try:

def compare_lists(list1, list2):
    if len(list1) != len(list2): # Weed out unequal length lists.
        return False
    for item in list1:
        if item not in list2:
            return False
    return True

a_list_1 = ['apple', 'orange', 'grape', 'pear']
a_list_2 = ['pear', 'orange', 'grape', 'apple']

b_list_1 = ['apple', 'orange', 'grape', 'pear']
b_list_2 = ['apple', 'orange', 'banana', 'pear']

c_list_1 = ['apple', 'orange', 'grape']
c_list_2 = ['grape', 'orange']

print compare_lists(a_list_1, a_list_2) # Returns True
print compare_lists(b_list_1, b_list_2) # Returns False
print compare_lists(c_list_1, c_list_2) # Returns False

Convert the list into the set and then find the number of elements in the set. If the result is 1, it has identical elements and if not, then the elements in the list are not identical.

list1 = [1,1,1]
len(set(list1)) 
>1

list1 = [1,2,3]
len(set(list1)
>3

Regarding using reduce() with lambda. Here is a working code that I personally think is way nicer than some of the other answers.

reduce(lambda x, y: (x[1]==y, y), [2, 2, 2], (True, 2))

Returns a tuple where the first value is the boolean if all items are same or not.

I’d do:

not any((x[i] != x[i+1] for i in range(0, len(x)-1)))

as any stops searching the iterable as soon as it finds a True condition.

>>> a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
>>> z = [(a[x], a[x+1]) for x in range(0, len(a)-1)]
>>> z
[(1, 2), (2, 3), (3, 4), (4, 5), (5, 6)]
# Replacing it with the test
>>> z = [(a[x] == a[x+1]) for x in range(0, len(a)-1)]
>>> z
[False, False, False, False, False]
>>> if False in z : Print "All elements are not equal"

def allTheSame(i):
    j = itertools.groupby(i)
    for k in j: break
    for k in j: return False
    return True

Works in Python 2.4, which doesn’t have “all”.

Can use map and lambda

lst = [1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1]

print all(map(lambda x: x == lst[0], lst[1:]))

Or use diff method of numpy:

import numpy as np
def allthesame(l):
    return np.all(np.diff(l)==0)

And to call:

print(allthesame([1,1,1]))

Output:

True

Or use diff method of numpy:

import numpy as np
def allthesame(l):
    return np.unique(l).shape[0]<=1

And to call:

print(allthesame([1,1,1]))

Output:

True

You can do:

reduce(and_, (x==yourList[0] for x in yourList), True)

It is fairly annoying that python makes you import the operators like operator.and_. As of python3, you will need to also import functools.reduce.

(You should not use this method because it will not break if it finds non-equal values, but will continue examining the entire list. It is just included here as an answer for completeness.)

lambda lst: reduce(lambda a,b:(b,b==a[0] and a[1]), lst, (lst[0], True))[1]

The next one will short short circuit:

all(itertools.imap(lambda i:yourlist[i]==yourlist[i+1], xrange(len(yourlist)-1)))

Change the list to a set. Then if the size of the set is only 1, they must have been the same.

if len(set(my_list)) == 1:

There is also a pure Python recursive option:

 def checkEqual(lst):
    if len(lst)==2 :
        return lst[0]==lst[1]
    else:
        return lst[0]==lst[1] and checkEqual(lst[1:])

However for some reason it is in some cases two orders of magnitude slower than other options. Coming from C language mentality, I expected this to be faster, but it is not!

The other disadvantage is that there is recursion limit in Python which needs to be adjusted in this case. For example using this.

You can use .nunique() to find number of unique items in a list.

def identical_elements(list):
    series = pd.Series(list)
    if series.nunique() == 1: identical = True
    else:  identical = False
    return identical



identical_elements(['a', 'a'])
Out[427]: True

identical_elements(['a', 'b'])
Out[428]: False

you can use set. It will make a set and remove repetitive elements. Then check that it has no more than 1 element.

if len(set(your_list)) <= 1:
    print('all ements are equal')

Example:

>>> len(set([5, 5])) <= 1
True