Python 2 Max Function

Question

Here is my code

def max_array_diff(line):
    return max(line)

line = raw_input().split()
print max_array_diff(line)
print line

Here is the output I am getting

9
['1', '9', '2', '-7', '10', '4', '3']

I need my output to be 10. raw_input() is coming in as a string, I have converted it to a list and am trying to get the max value from it but it keeps returning 9 instead of 10. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

You should convert the input to integers after splitting them; otherwise you'd be doing string comparisons with max().

Change:

line = raw_input().split()

to:

line = map(int, raw_input().split())

Alternatively, you can specify int as the key function for max() so that comparisons would be made based on the integer values of the string inputs.

Change:

return max(line)

to:

return max(line, key=int)

Answer 2

You need to do integer compare instead of string compare:

def max_array_diff(line):
    return max(line)

line = [int(x) for x in raw_input().split()]
print max_array_diff(line)
print line

Answer 3

Or another way is to do:

print(sorted(raw_input().split(),key=int))

To get the highest do:

print(sorted(raw_input().split(),key=int)[0])

To get Top 3:

print(sorted(raw_input().split(),key=int)[:3])