Python - get element of list where value is the minimum of all elements

Question

I have the following list:

[[733.16584917887963, 123620000.0, 32111000.0, 301.0],
 [732.27472276611104, 123620001.0, 32111000.0, 302.3], 
 [731.39029416733558, 123620002.0, 32111000.0, 303.3], 
 [730.49893696170341, 123620003.0, 32111000.0, 303.9], 
 [729.61188100398681, 123620004.0, 32111000.0, 304.2]]

I want to have the array of this list that has the minimum in the first element of this array.

The minimum value is:

729.61188100398681

And I want to have as output:

[729.61188100398681, 123620004.0, 32111000.0, 304.2]

Sort the list by the first elements. Then the first element of the sorted list is the one you want. — Barmar, Sep 22 '17 at 07:32
@Barmar why would you do that when you can use `min(..., key=)` ? — Jon Clements, Sep 22 '17 at 07:35
Better dupe target: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14802128/tuple-pairs-finding-minimum-python — Aran-Fey, Sep 22 '17 at 08:37

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 22 '17 at 07:35

Sort the list and take out the first sublist:

lista = [[733.16584917887963, 123620000.0, 32111000.0, 301.0],
 [732.27472276611104, 123620001.0, 32111000.0, 302.3], 
 [731.39029416733558, 123620002.0, 32111000.0, 303.3], 
 [730.49893696170341, 123620003.0, 32111000.0, 303.9], 
 [729.61188100398681, 123620004.0, 32111000.0, 304.2]]

print(sorted(lista)[0]) # [729.6118810039868, 123620004.0, 32111000.0, 304.2]

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 22 '17 at 07:36

You can use sorted and lambda function to get the result just like this:

my_list = [[733.16584917887963, 123620000.0, 32111000.0, 301.0],
[732.27472276611104, 123620001.0, 32111000.0, 302.3], 
[731.39029416733558, 123620002.0, 32111000.0, 303.3], 
[730.49893696170341, 123620003.0, 32111000.0, 303.9], 
[729.61188100398681, 123620004.0, 32111000.0, 304.2]]

sorted_lst = sorted(my_list,key=lambda elem:elem[0])

print sorted_lst[0]
#Output : [729.6118810039868, 123620004.0, 32111000.0, 304.2]

Similarly you can change the key to any of the elements as per your choice.

Python - get element of list where value is the minimum of all elements

2 Answers2