from collections import deque LEN = 4 dups = deque(maxlen=LEN) def hasdups(): for x in dups: if dups.count(x) > 1: return True return False with open("input.txt", "r") as f: line = f.readline().strip() for (index, char) in enumerate(line): dups.append(char) print(char) print(dups) if len(dups) >= LEN and not hasdups(): print(index+1) break