from list of integers, get number closest to a given value

python list sorting integer
Ricky Robinson picture Ricky Robinson · Aug 27, 2012 · Viewed 192.9k times · Source

Given a list of integers, I want to find which number is the closest to a number I give in input:

>>> myList = [4, 1, 88, 44, 3]
>>> myNumber = 5
>>> takeClosest(myList, myNumber)
...
4

Is there any quick way to do this?

Answer

kennytm picture kennytm · Aug 27, 2012

If we are not sure that the list is sorted, we could use the built-in min() function, to find the element which has the minimum distance from the specified number.

>>> min(myList, key=lambda x:abs(x-myNumber))
4

Note that it also works with dicts with int keys, like {1: "a", 2: "b"}. This method takes O(n) time.

If the list is already sorted, or you could pay the price of sorting the array once only, use the bisection method illustrated in @Lauritz's answer which only takes O(log n) time (note however checking if a list is already sorted is O(n) and sorting is O(n log n).)

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