not exactly sure what you are asking but I would do something like: someList = ["one", "two", "three"] if not x in someList: # DO YOUR STUFF else: print "ERROR: %s is in list"%x mehta at mama.indstate.edu wrote: > how can I specify not to match strings like > donot match "one" | "two" | "three" >> (one|two|three) could match any string as one or two or three > but I want them not to matched at that position. >> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ > Before you buy. >> -- > http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/attachments/19991021/c56d8442/attachment.html>