Which is more pythonic?

[Paul Hankin]

benjamin.zimmerman at gmail.com wrote:
> I have a goal function that returns the fitness of a given solution. I
> need to wrap that function with a class or a function to keep track of
> the best solution I encounter. Which of the following would best serve
> my purpose and be the most pythonic?

You could write a function that generates your trial solutions and use
max.

Eg: instead of using your Goal class:

def f(score_function):
    goal = Goal(score_function)
    while there's more solutions:
          ... produce trial solution
          goal(trial_solution)
    return goal.best

Write a solution generator...
def all_solutions():
    while there's more solutions:
        ... produce trial solution
        yield trial_solution

...and find the best using
best = max(all_solutions(), key = score_function)

This uses a builtin rather than either of the snippets in the original
post, and it's also a much cleaner approach.

--
Paul Hankin