Python: how to find value in list smaller than target

Question

For example I have a non-ordered list of values [10, 20, 50, 200, 100, 300, 250, 150]

I have this code which returns the next greater value:

def GetN         


        

Answer 1

Edit: Ah, I used templist instead of list -- hence the confusion. I didn't mean it to be a one-line function; you still have to do the conversions. (Of course, as Mike DeSimone rightly points out, using list as a variable name is a terrible idea!! So I had a good reason for being confusing. :)

To be more explicit about it, here's a slightly streamlined version of the function (fixed to test properly for an empty list):

def GetNextHighTemp(self, temp, templist):
    templist = (int(t) for t in templist if t != '')
    templist = [t for t in templist if t < int(temp)]
    if templist: return max(templist)
    else: return None                   # or raise an error

Thanks to Mike for the suggestion to return None in case of an empty list -- I like that.

You could shorten this even more like so:

def GetNextHighTemp(self, temp, templist):
    try: return str(max(int(t) for t in templist if t != '' and int(t) < int(temp)))
    except ValueError: return None      # or raise a different error