[Tutor] Get max quantity

[Brian Wisti]

Hi Carlos,

On 6/13/07, Carlos <carloslara at web.de> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> If I have a dictionary like:
>
> inventory = {'apples': 430, 'bananas': 312, 'oranges': 525, 'pears': 217}
>
> How can I get the item with the largest quantity? I tried:
>
> max(inventory)
>
> but got:
>
> 'pears'
>
> What I would like to get is 'oranges', at least in this case.
>
> Thanks,
> Carlos
>
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>

There are indeed several ways to sort this particular cat. Here's my
own favorite:

# Sort the list of keys by inventory count, from high to low
>>> inventory
{'pears': 217, 'apples': 430, 'oranges': 525, 'bananas': 312}
>>> items = inventory.keys()
>>> items
['pears', 'apples', 'oranges', 'bananas']
>>> items.sort(cmp=lambda a,b: cmp(inventory[b], inventory[a]))
>>> items
['oranges', 'apples', 'bananas', 'pears']
>>> items[0]
'oranges'

It does result in another list, same as the the approaches listed by
Kent and Jason. If *all* you were interested was the key associated
with the greatest inventory count, you could wrap your favorite
solution in a function and return the key from that.

Kind Regards,

Brian Wisti
http://coolnamehere.com/