I want to compare two lists of tuples:

larry = [(1,'a'), (2, 'b')]
moe = [(2, 'b'), (1, 'a')]

such that the order of the items in the list may differ. Are there library functions to do this ?

>> deep_equals(larry, moe)
True

If I understand you, your tuples represent sets, and your lists represent sets. The obvious thing to do is to convert them to sets:

def setterific(l):return frozenset(frozenset(p) for p in l)setterific(larry) == setterific(moe)

This uses frozensets, because one cannot have sets of sets in python (because sets are mutable); see How can I create a Set of Sets in Python?.

If you only have one level of sets, go with frozenset(larry) == frozenset(moe).