Newbie: finding the key/index of the min/max element

[Alex Martelli]

holger krekel wrote:
        ...
> and try to contribute. And i hope that the people who brought
> c.l.py to its current mostly joyful state give interested newcomers
> more than one chance to adapt. (e.g. i hope that Alex Martelli
> does not think too badly about me after our 'update locals()'
> argument).

My opinion of people is even more fluid than Python's data
structures (you could equate it to Ruby's) -- I believe that
people change all the time and they're quite likely to come
up with different aspects/personas depending on the situation.

But you're wrong to take me as an example of "people who brought
c.l.py to ... joyful state".  I'm an often-grumpy, verbose, and
occasionally flamewar-prone bot.  (/F is a more-often-grumpy,
very concise, flame-impervious one; timbot, an always-cheerful,
almost-as-verbose-as-me, flame-deflecting one).  Just another
step in the unending stream of attempts at simulating endearing
human foibles (of the three bots, I'm the only one programmed to
occasionally simulate almost human-like errors -- the other two,
being earlier, more solid designs, don't err, beyond occasional
typos or such, and thus are much easier to spot as non-humans).

And my programmed attempted-humor style is strictly deadpan (with
a late patch to occasionally inject smilies, which never worked
reliably anyway).  I'm told this doesn't work so well, so the
next bot in the works will rather imitate some kind of lilac
coloured dinosaur that's apparently much liked on TV (bots don't
watch TV, of course, so I don't know what they're talking about).


Alex