On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 9:09 PM, Albert van der Horst <alb...@spenarnc.xs4all.nl> wrote: >>If there is more than one item with the maximum calculated the first is >>given, so for your attempt >> >>max(xrange(100,200), key=lambda i: i%17==0 ) > >> >>the values False, False, True, False, ... are calculated and because >> >>>>> True > False >>True >> >>the first one with a True result is returned. >> > > So in that case max doesn't return the maximum (True), but instead > something else. > > Useful as that function may be, it shouldn't have been called max. > > I don't blame myself for being misled.
If lots of them are equally the largest, by whatever definition of largest you have, it has to do one of three things: 1) Raise an exception 2) Return multiple items (either as a tuple, or a generator, or something) 3) Pick one of them and return it. Python's max() does the third, and for the picking part, uses the first one it comes across - a decent way to do it. If there's no clear maximum, it can't do any better than that. It's still returning something for which there is no greater. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
