Python: take max N elements from some list

Question

Is there some function which would return me the N highest elements from some list?

I.e. if max(l) returns the single highest element, sth. like m

Answer 1

heapq.nlargest:

>>> import heapq, random
>>> heapq.nlargest(3, (random.gauss(0, 1) for _ in xrange(100)))
[1.9730767232998481, 1.9326532289091407, 1.7762926716966254]