Engineering #21: how many different-length "normal" implementations?

And "The Bathers" by Fernand Leger

The Bathers (Fernand Leger, 20th c.)

This isn’t an important question, but as I was doing this exercise —

The destinations list contains a list of travel destinations.

destinations = ['Prague', 'London', 'Sydney', 'Belfast',
                'Rome', 'Aruba', 'Paris', 'Bora Bora',
                'Barcelona', 'Rio de Janeiro', 'Marrakesh',
                'New York City']

Write a function that, without using the built-in in operator, checks whether a specific destination is included within destinations. For example: When checking whether 'Barcelona' is contained in destinations, the expected output is True, whereas the expected output for 'Nashville' is False.

And saw three different solutions of increasing length for it —

def contains(element, lst):
    return element in lst

def contains(element, lst):
    for item in lst:
        if item == element:
            return True
    return False

def contains(element, lst):
    index = 0
    while index < len(lst):
        if lst[index] == element:
            return True
        index += 1
    return False

— I was thinking: how many distinct (and non-redundant) implementations of this are there, where each is at least two lines longer than the last?

I don’t know; just thinking. My ChatGPT gave a detailed answer, I don’t know enough yet to verify quickly, but I’ll quote this: “~5–8 more sane versions up to ~21 lines; past 25 lines you’re just writing a different program that coincidentally answers a yes/no question.”