9.3 Common list operations

Learning objectives

By the end of this section you should be able to

Use built-in functions max, min, and sum.
Demonstrate how to copy a list.

Using built-in operations

The max function called on a list returns the largest element in the list. The min function called on a list returns the smallest element in the list. The max and min functions work for lists as long as elements within the list are comparable.

The sum function called on a list of numbers returns the sum of all elements in the list.

Example 1 Common list operations

"""Common list operations."""

# Set up a list of number
snum_list = [28, 92, 17, 3, -5, 999, 1]

# Set up a list of words
city_list = ["New York", "Missoula", "Chicago", "Bozeman", 
"Birmingham", "Austin", "Sacramento"]

# Usage of the max() funtion
print(max(num_list))

# max() function works for strings as well
print(max(city_list))

# Usage of the min() funtion which also works for strings
print(min(num_list))

print(min(city_list))

# sum() only works for a list of numbers
print(sum(num_list))

The above code's output is:


    999
    Sacramento
    -5
    Austin
    1135

Copying a list

The copy method is used to create a copy of a list.

Try It

Copy

Make a copy of word_list called wisdom. Sort the list called wisdom. Create a sentence using the words in each list and print those sentences (no need to add periods at the end of the sentences).

word_list = ["exercise", "is", "truly", "a", "useful", "coding"]

Adapted from Introduction to Python Programming by OpenStax (openstax.org), licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Changes were made. License: CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0.