This Python snippet presents methods to retrieve the largest and smallest items from an iterable using built-in functions and the heapq module.
Example
"""Getting the largest and smallest items in an iterable."""
from heapq import nsmallest, nlargest
numbers = [50, 34, 48, 26, 37, 20, 72, 31, 71, 88]
print("Largest item:", f"{max(numbers) = }", "", sep="\n")
print("Largest N items:", f"{nlargest(3, numbers) = }", "", sep="\n")
print("All items, largest to smallest:", f"{sorted(numbers, reverse=True) = }", "", sep="\n")
print("Smallest item:", f"{min(numbers) = }", "", sep="\n")
print("Smallest N items:", f"{nsmallest(3, numbers) = }", "", sep="\n")
print("All items, smallest to largest:", f"{sorted(numbers) = }", "", sep="\n")Output
Largest item:
max(numbers) = 88
Largest N items:
nlargest(3, numbers) = [88, 72, 71]
All items, largest to smallest:
sorted(numbers, reverse=True) = [88, 72, 71, 50, 48, 37, 34, 31, 26, 20]
Smallest item:
min(numbers) = 20
Smallest N items:
nsmallest(3, numbers) = [20, 26, 31]
All items, smallest to largest:
sorted(numbers) = [20, 26, 31, 34, 37, 48, 50, 71, 72, 88]