Unittest that every element matches in 2 lists

Question

Unit testing that 2 lists are the same in Python. Seems like it fails if they're not in order. Thought about sorting them first or converting to a set. But the set method isn't true, if there's duplicate etc

l1 = ['c-00355', 'b-0ae53', 'c-07d32']
l2 = ['b-0ae53', 'c-07d32' ,'c-00355']

l1 == l2
False

set(l1) == set(l2)
True

sorted(l1) == sorted(l2)
True

Answer 1

Maybe consider a collections.Counter - it's a kind of cross between a set and a list sort and then comparing it... it's __eq__ method checks each key is present in both and that the quantities match, eg:

from collections import Counter                                                   

l1 = ['c-00355', 'b-0ae53', 'c-07d32']                                            
l2 = ['b-0ae53', 'c-07d32' ,'c-00355']                                            

Counter(l1) == Counter(l2)                                                        
# True

l2 = ['b-0ae53', 'c-07d32' ,'c-00355', 'c']                                       

Counter(l1) == Counter(l2)                                                        
# False