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From: Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 18:26:42 -0700
Subject: Re: PyWart: Language missing maximum constant of numeric types!
To: Devin Jeanpierre <jeanpierreda@gmail.com>
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Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.python:20848

On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 10:32 AM, Devin Jeanpierre
<jeanpierreda@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 9:25 AM, Neil Cerutti <neilc@norwich.edu> wrote:
>> The only time I've naively pined for such a thing is when
>> misapplying C idioms for finding a minimum value.
>>
>> Python provides an excellent min implementation to use instead.
>
> min can be a little inconvenient. As soon as anything complicated has
> to be done during the min expression, you need to switch to using
> something else for sanity's sake. In that vein, I do actually
> sometimes use float('inf') (for numbers), or a custom max/min object.
>
> ----
>
> Silly and completely nonserious addendum:
>
> Forgive me, I have spoken in error! min is the one true way, for you
> can still do it with a little wrangling, as follows:
>
> =A0 =A0@operator.itemgetter(1)
> =A0 =A0@min
> =A0 =A0@apply
> =A0 =A0def closest_object():
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0for x in xrange(board_width)
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0for y in xrange(board_height):
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0try:
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0entity =3D board.get_entity(x, y)
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0except EntityNotFound:
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0pass
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0else:
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0yield distance(player.pos, entity.=
pos), entity

Cute, but what's so terrible about:

    def all_entities():
        for x in xrange(board_width):
            for y in xrange(board_height):
                try:
                    yield board.get_entity(x, y)
                except EntityNotFound:
                    pass

    closest_object =3D min(all_entities,
        key=3Dlambda e: distance(player.pos, e.pos))

Especially given that all_entities should be reusable in other contexts.

Cheers,
Ian