How to obtain the absolute value of numbers?

python absolute-value

Guangyue He · Dec 30, 2013 · Viewed 49.3k times · Source

I have a list of numbers that looks like the one below:

[2, 3, -3, -2]

How can I obtain a list of values that contain the absolute value of every value in the above list? In this case it would be:

[2, 3, 3, 2]

Answer

You can use abs and map functions like this

myList = [2,3,-3,-2]
print map(abs, myList)

Output

[2, 3, 3, 2]

Or you can use list comprehension like this
```
[abs(number) for number in myList]
```
Or you can use list comprehension and a simple if else condition like this
```
[-number if number < 0 else number for number in myList]
```