Ndtyjky

This is my problem:

I have a list of lists (adjoining) that is setup of x and y coordinates.

I'm trying to create a function that can figure out which way to go, that should return a single element from that list.

That return value will be the direction the character moves.

(Example: adjoining = [[1, 0], [3, 2], [1, 1]]. Return returns the smallest both x and y coordinate which is [1, 0].)

My function should return the value with the lowest x coordinate. If there are multiple x coordinates that have the same low value, the one with the lowest y coordinate should be chosen.

How can I create a function that can figure out which x and y value is lowest?

Just use min() like so:

>>> adjoining = [[3,2],[1,1],[1,0]]

>>> min(adjoining)

[1, 0]

You can do this:

minimum = min(adjoining, key=lambda elem: (elem[0], elem[1]))

Result:

[1, 0]

Use the key parameter to define the fields which will affect the sorting process. First, you will get the minimum element based on x value and if there are many of them, they will be sorted again based on their y value.

An alternative is to use the itemgetter function from operator module:

import operator



adjoining = [[1, 0], [3, 2], [1, 1]]



minimum = min(adjoining, key=operator.itemgetter(0,1))

adjoining.sort(key= lambda x:x[0])

mins = [i for i in adjoining if i[0] == adjoining[0][0]]

if len(mins)>1:

   mins.sort(key= lambda x:x[1])

   min = [i for i in mins if i[1] == mins[0][1]]

else:

   min = mins

answer = min[0]

I used sort with the key attribute. This allows you to define the criteria by which to sort the list.
The rest of the code is base on list comprehension.

[ item for item in a list_of_items if item == wanted_item]

This filters list_of_item based of some chosen criteria. Just need to make sure what follows if can be evaluated True or False.