Question

Does a direct way to do this exists?

if element in aList:
   #get the element from the list

I’m thinking something like this:

aList = [ ([1,2,3],4) , ([5,6,7],8) ]
element = [5,6,7]
if element in aList
     #print the 8

Answer 1

L = [([1, 2, 3], 4), ([5, 6, 7], 8)]
element = [5, 6, 7]

for a, b in L:
  if a == element:
    print b
    break
else:
  print "not found"

But it sounds like you want to use a dictionary:

L = [([1, 2, 3], 4), ([5, 6, 7], 8)]
element = [5, 6, 7]

D = dict((tuple(a), b) for a, b in L)
# keys must be hashable: list is not, but tuple is
# or you could just build the dict directly:
#D = {(1,2,3): 4, (5,6,7): 8}

v = D.get(tuple(element))
if v is not None:
  print v
else:
  print "not found"

Note that while there are more compact forms using next below, I imagined the reality of your code (rather than the contrived example) to be doing something at least slightly more complicated, so that using an block for the if and else becomes more readable with multiple statements.