Don Parris said unto the world upon 08/07/2005 20:09: > On 7/8/05, luke p <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<snip> >>what I want to do is find out which value in my dictionary is lowest. >>is there a dictionary function for this, like alpha.min() that will >>return a key:value pair of the lowest? I cannot find one and I >>wondered if there was a quick fix to this. <snip> >>thanks in advance. >>-Luke > > > > I'm new at this, but thought I would throw my $0.02 in the ring for > the learning experience. I know that sequence operations won't work > on dictionaries. I wonder if you could get away with a lambda here? > I'm probably in way over my head, but would something like this work: > > min = (lambda x, y: x < y) > min(1, 9) > > Could min() take the dictionary values, as in min(dict[0], dict[9])? > > Again, I'm no expert, but having my input picked apart will be a good thing. > ;) > > Don Hi Don, try it out at the prompt :-) >>> min = (lambda x, y: x < y) >>> min(1, 9) True >>> So, that's just a complicated way of saying x < y. ;-) There is also a bit of a consensus (though not unanimous) that using lambda to get a function bound to a name is to obscure a def. (See <http://wiki.python.org/moin/DubiousPython#head-f7e19d971af3a70989ba755ff4f5a4194fc4feff>) Best, Brian vdB _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
