Question

Consider the following:
p1=1;
p2=5;
p3=7;
highest=max(p1,p2,p3).

The max function would return 7. I am looking to create a similar function, which would return “p3”. I have created a small function (by simple comparisons) for the above example, shown below. however I am having trouble when the number of arguments go up.

def highest(p1,p2,p3):
    if (p1>p2) and (p1>p3):
        return "p1"
    if (p2>p1) and (p2>p3):
        return "p2"
    if (p3>p1) and (p3>p1):
        return "p3"

Is there a simpler way to do this>

Answer 1

Update: Paul Hankin pointed out that max() took a key function, which I didn’t know. So:

>>> def argmax(**kw):
...   return max(kw, key=kw.get)
... 
>>> argmax(foo=3, bar=5, frotz=1, kaka=-3)
'bar'

---

Other solutions for completeness:

In Python 2.7 and 3.x you can use dictionary comprehensions.

>>> def argmax(**kw):
...     wk = {v:k for k,v in kw.items()}
...     return wk[max(wk)]
... 
>>> argmax(foo=3, bar=5, frotz=1, kaka=-3)   
'bar'

Dictionary comprehensions are neat. 🙂

In earlier versions of Python you can do this:

>>> def argmax(**kw):
...     wk = dict([(v,k) for k,v in kw.items()])
...     return wk[max(wk)]
... 
>>> argmax(foo=3, bar=5, frotz=1, kaka=-3)   
'bar'

Which will work in anything after Python 2.2 or so.