Carlos 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.
In Python 2.5, you can use the key= parameter to max:
In [3]: inventory = {'apples': 430, 'bananas': 312, 'oranges': 525,
'pears': 217}
In [4]: max(inventory, key=inventory.__getitem__)
Out[4]: 'oranges'
In older Pythons, convert the dict to a list of (value, key) pairs and
find the max of that:
In [5]: max((value, key) for key, value in inventory.iteritems())[1]
Out[5]: 'oranges'
Kent
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