David Isaac wrote: > 1. Why is there no argmax built-in? > (This would return the index of the largest element in a sequence.)
I guess because it's not used frequently enough. I've needed argmax/argmin more than once though, so I would welcome them as builtins. > 2. Is this a good argmax (as long as I know the iterable is finite)? > def argmax(iterable): return max(izip( iterable, count() ))[1] Yes, it's ok. Here's another one that doesn't require importing itertools: def argmax(iterable): return max((x,i) for i,x in enumerate(iterable))[1] > 3. If this is the only place in a module where I need count and izip, > should I import them at the module level or at the level of the function? > What are the considerations here? Both have their merits. I like having the imports close to the point they're used, at least if used only once; OTOH having all imports at the top of the module makes easier to see the module's dependencies without grep'ing for import (that's especially useful for non-standard imported modules or new additions ot the std lib if backwards compatibility is an issue). George -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
