Python - find integer closest to 0 in list

Question

Possible Duplicate:
finding index of an item closest to the value in a list that's not entirely sorted

I've got a list of positive and negative numbers in Python ([237, 72, -18, 237, 236, 237, 60, -158, -273, -78, 492, 243]). I want to find the number which is closest to 0. How do I do this?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9706041/finding-index-of-an-item-closest-to-the-value-in-a-list-thats-not-entirely-sort Looks like the same question was asked and answered. — Tim, Aug 12 '12 at 16:12

score 52 · Accepted Answer · edited May 08 '17 at 23:04

52

How about this:

lst = [237, 72, -18, 237, 236, 237, 60, -158, -273, -78, 492, 243]
min((abs(x), x) for x in lst)[1]

A nice and much shorter answer:

min(lst, key=abs)

edited May 08 '17 at 23:04

nbro

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answered Aug 12 '12 at 16:12

Óscar López

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Will always return negative number, if a negative and positive number are the closest to 0. – eDonkey Oct 05 '20 at 13:34

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 13 '12 at 09:23

3

reduce(lambda x, y : x if abs(y) > abs(x) else y, your_sequence)

edited Aug 13 '12 at 09:23

j0k

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answered Aug 12 '12 at 16:16

verdesmarald

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Python - find integer closest to 0 in list

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