On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:03:08 +0000, Norah Jones wrote:
> For example:
> a=[-15,-30,-10,1,3,5]
>
> I want to find a negative and a positive minimum.
>
> example: negative
> print(min(a)) = -30
>
> positive
> print(min(a)) = 1
Thank you for providing examples, but they don't really cover all the
possibilities. For example, if you had:
a = [-1, -2, -3, 100, 200, 300]
I can see that you consider -3 to be the "negative minimum". Do you
consider the "positive minimum" to be 100, or 1?
If you expect it to be 100, then the solution is:
min([item for item in a if item > 0])
If you expect it to be 1, then the solution is:
min([abs(item) for item in a])
which could also be written as:
min(map(abs, a))
A third alternative is in Python 3.3:
min(a, key=abs)
which will return -1.
--
Steven
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