string - Comparing 2 variables characters (Python)

Question

I want to compare 2 string variables and return the number of characters that are shared between the 2 strings. So "work" and "what" would return "1/4" since 1 out of 4 letters (only w in this example) are the same between the 2 strings.

Answer 1

This gives you the number of letters that appear in both words in the same position:

sum(1 for a, b in zip(word1, word2) if a == b)

zip gives you an iterator for each character in both words at the same time, and you simply sum 1 for each time they match.

This gives you the generally shared letters between both words in any position:

len(set(word1) & set(word2))

This creates two sets of letters, takes the intersection of both sets, and tells you how big that intersection is.