looking for sweeter code to compare parts of a list

[Skaperen]

i was thinking of making a function for each type of test then applying them in the order of most likely first. that we the details of each type of test is away from the loop going through all the lines. turns out performance is not very bad. 600000 records only takes a few seconds, and this is not bad if it takes a few minutes (it will ultimately be run at most once an hour).