Is it possible to have multiple statements in a python lambda expression?

Question

I am a python newbie trying to achieve the following:

I have a list of lists:

lst = [[567,345,234],[253,465,756, 2345],[333,777,111, 555]]
         


        

Answer 1

You can do it in O(n) time using min and index instead of using sort or heapq.

First create new list of everything except the min value of the original list:

new_list = lst[:lst.index(min(lst))] + lst[lst.index(min(lst))+1:]

Then take the min value of the new list:

second_smallest = min(new_list)

Now all together in a single lambda:

map(lambda x: min(x[:x.index(min(x))] + x[x.index(min(x))+1:]), lst)

Yes it is really ugly, but it should be algorithmically cheap. Also since some folks in this thread want to see list comprehensions:

[min(x[:x.index(min(x))] + x[x.index(min(x))+1:]) for x in lst]