Re: Fastest way to max() list

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  • Chris Rebert

    #1

    Re: Fastest way to max() list

    On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 8:57 PM, David Di Biase <dave.dibiase@g mail.comwrote:
    I have a list with about 1000-1500 sub-lists which look like so:
    list[-0.2881795521329 0786, 3.6693631467403 929, 'H', 31.312252330357 84]]
    >
    The first and second values are Angstrom units specifying the location of a
    particle. What I'd like to do is determine the distance between the smallest
    and largest value in the arrays first position 0. I tried reading the manual
    for this but I don't see how it applies key or any of those other commands
    to the function. I could easily write a sort to do this and capture the
    first and last spots, but why do that when I can use max and min (if I can
    actually do that...).
    A. You should probably be using objects rather than arrays to
    represent your datapoints, so that they're more structured and it's
    more apparent what the values mean.

    B. Assuming by "distance" you meant "difference " and/or that the
    distance is only in 1 dimension:

    from operator import itemgetter
    firsts = map(itemgetter( 0), main_list)
    distance = max(firsts) - min(firsts)
    >
    So you wonderful Python gods, lay some knowledge on me. please? lol...
    >
    while I'm at it, is there a way to modify an entire list without having to
    produce a whole new one? For example now say I want to modify list[0] and
    multiply it by some value. From what I understand previous version of Python
    allowed lists to be multiplied like matrices...now apparently it just
    replicates the list. :-/ shucks...
    You just have to apply the transform to each list element individually
    (also, you might consider using NumPy [http://numpy.scipy.org/] if
    you're doing a lot of matrix manipulation):

    for lst in main_list:
    lst[0] *= some_value

    Regards,
    Chris
    >
    The first question would be useful to know, but the second question I do
    quite a bit of and the "best practice" would be really great to know!
    >
    Thanks in advanced!
    >
    --

    >
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