Check if an item equals to one out of many elements in Python
<p>I want to check if an item from a list equals to any one element out of a given set of n elements, if yes, do some thing.</p>

<p>For example, the most intuitive but of course cumbersome and ugly way is:</p>

<pre><code>for item in List:
    if (item == element1) or (item == element2) or ... or (item == elementn):
        do something
</code></pre>

<p>What are the better ways to check?</p>
