sorting a dictionary

[Laura Creighton]

> def get_highest(d): # don't use the name 'dict'
>     l = d.keys()
>     l.sort()
>     return l[-1]
> 
> -d

If you give this a dict of d1={"a":10, "b":5, "c":15, "d":12}
this will return 'd' because 'd' sorts after 'c'.  I don't
think that this is what the OP wanted.

This will work, but there may be faster ways.

>>> def get_highest(d):
...     l = []
...     for k in d.keys():
...             l.append([d[k], k])
...     l.sort()
...     return l[-1][1]
...
>>> get_highest(d1)
'c'

Laura

> 
> "Yuval" <yuvalfeld at hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:6ca96053.0302032256.63f147be at posting.google.com...
> > I'm looking for an efficient way to get the key of the highest value
> > in a dictionary.
> > For example, for dict = {"a":10, "b":5, "c":15}, I want to write a
> > function get_highest(dict), that will return c as the result (since c
> > is the key of the highest value in the dict.
> >
> > Thanks.
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list