Finding the index of the value which is the min or max in Python

Question

I\'ve got a structure of the form:

>>> items
[([[0, 1], [2, 20]], \'zz\', \'\'), ([[1, 3], [5, 29], [50, 500]], \'a\', \'b\')]

The

Answer 1

It's easy if you don't try to use the fact that the internal range lists are sorted

sorted(sum([ [(rng,) + i[1:] for rng in i[0]] for i in items ], []), lambda i: i[0][0])

It sounds like you want a function that returns the index of the smallest value though

def min_idx(l, key=lambda x: x):
    min_i, min_key = None, float('inf')
    for i, v in enumerate(l):
        key_v = key(v)
        if key_v < min_key:
            mini_i = i
            min_key = key_v
    return min_i

def merge_items(items):
    res = []
    while True:
        i = min_idx(items, key=lambda i: i[0][0][0])
        item = items[i]
        res.append((item[0][0],) + item[1:])
    return res