python checking presence of a list element
<p>I am trying to solve a more generic problem similar to the following. In the following, I get vow_array, which indicates the presence of a subset of vowels in some text, say, sent to my program. I need to print each vowel's presence as 0 or 1. </p>

<pre><code>ch_a = 0
ch_e = 0
ch_i = 0
ch_o = 0
ch_u = 0

# vow_array is generated at runtime; here is an example
vow_array = ['a', 'o', 'u']

if 'a' in vow_array:
    ch_a = ch_a + 1
if 'e' in vow_array:
    ch_e = ch_e + 1
if 'i' in vow_array:
    ch_i = ch_i + 1
if 'o' in vow_array:
    ch_o = ch_o + 1
if 'u' in vow_array:
    ch_u = ch_u + 1

print ch_a, ch_e, ch_i, ch_o, ch_u
</code></pre>

<p>I think this code is too long and prone to errors. Is there a more compact way of writing this? Also, say if I had to do this for all 'letters' in the alphabet I don't want to have to repeat the code.</p>
