[python] How to check a string for specific characters?

Quick comparison of timings in response to the post by Abbafei:

import timeit

def func1():
    phrase = 'Lucky Dog'
    return any(i in 'LD' for i in phrase)

def func2():
    phrase = 'Lucky Dog'
    if ('L' in phrase) or ('D' in phrase):
        return True
    else:
        return False

if __name__ == '__main__': 
    func1_time = timeit.timeit(func1, number=100000)
    func2_time = timeit.timeit(func2, number=100000)
    print('Func1 Time: {0}\nFunc2 Time: {1}'.format(func1_time, func2_time))

Output:

Func1 Time: 0.0737484362111
Func2 Time: 0.0125144964371

So the code is more compact with any, but faster with the conditional.

EDIT : TL;DR -- For long strings, if-then is still much faster than any!

I decided to compare the timing for a long random string based on some of the valid points raised in the comments:

# Tested in Python 2.7.14

import timeit
from string import ascii_letters
from random import choice

def create_random_string(length=1000):
    random_list = [choice(ascii_letters) for x in range(length)]
    return ''.join(random_list)

def function_using_any(phrase):
    return any(i in 'LD' for i in phrase)

def function_using_if_then(phrase):
    if ('L' in phrase) or ('D' in phrase):
        return True
    else:
        return False

if __name__ == '__main__':
    random_string = create_random_string(length=2000)
    func1_time = timeit.timeit(stmt="function_using_any(random_string)",
                               setup="from __main__ import function_using_any, random_string",
                               number=200000)
    func2_time = timeit.timeit(stmt="function_using_if_then(random_string)",
                               setup="from __main__ import function_using_if_then, random_string",
                               number=200000)
    print('Time for function using any: {0}\nTime for function using if-then: {1}'.format(func1_time, func2_time))

Output:

Time for function using any: 0.1342546
Time for function using if-then: 0.0201827

If-then is almost an order of magnitude faster than any!