Just for completeness: The functions in Steve's original post named maximum calculate the minimum.
Also, timing-wise, on my machine with a random list of 200000 integers Steve's iteration version and Mitja's version are about equal, the system built-in is equal or slightly slower, and Paul's version about 3-4x slower. If the comparison function is very complex, the mileage may vary of course. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
