maximum() efficency

[Steven Bethard]

Steve R. Hastings wrote:
> On Sun, 26 Mar 2006 10:34:16 -0700, Steven Bethard wrote:
>> What's the original?
> 
> def minimum(cmp, lst):
>   """minimum(cmp, lst)
> 
>   Returns the minimal element in non-empty list LST with elements
>   compared via CMP() which should return values with the same semantics
>   as Python's cmp().  If there are several minimal elements, the last
>   one is returned.
>   """
> 
>   if not lst:
>     raise ValueError, 'empty list'
> 
>   minval = lst[0]
> 
>   for i in xrange(1, len(lst)):
>     v = lst[i]
>     if cmp(minval, v) > 0:
>       minval = v
> 
>   return minval
> 
> This is from Google's "goopy" package.
> 
> http://goog-goopy.sourceforge.net/

Ahh.  Yeah, nasty cmp= arguments certainly do screw that up.

If you're not just trying to implement a particular API, and you 
actually have a use-case you think you need this for, you might consider 
a key= argument instead of a cmp= argument.  It'll probably be at least 
as fast, and Python 2.5 will have one on both min() and max().  It'll 
work something like:
     http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/389659


STeVe