Question

I have a function that is passed two values and then iterates over the range of those values. The values can be passed in any order, so I need to find which one is the lowest first. I had the function written like this:

def myFunc(x, y):
    if x > y:
        min_val, max_val = y, x
    else:
        min_val, max_val = x, y
    for i in range(min_val, max_val):
    ...

But to save some screen space, I ended up changing it to:

def myFunc(x, y):
   min_val, max_val = sorted([x, y])
   for i in range(min_val, max_val):
   ...

How bad is this? Is there a better way that’s still one line?

Answer 1

Unless you need to microoptimise, I’d just to this

def myFunc(x, y):
    for i in range(*sorted((x, y))):
        ...

This is faster though

def myFunc(x, y):
    for i in range(x,y) if x<y else range(y,x):
        ...

minmax.py

def f1(x, y):
    for i in range(min(x, y), max(x, y)):
        pass

def f2(x, y):
    for i in range(*sorted((x, y))):
        pass

def f3(x, y):
    for i in range(x, y) if x<y else range(y, x):
        pass

def f4(x, y):
    if x>y:
        x,y = y,x
    for i in range(x, y):
        pass

def f5(x, y):
    mn,mx = ((x, y), (y, x))[x>y]
    for i in range(x,y):
        pass

benchmarks (f3 is fastest regardless of the order)

$ python -m timeit -s"import minmax as mm" "mm.f1(1,2)"
1000000 loops, best of 3: 1.93 usec per loop
$ python -m timeit -s"import minmax as mm" "mm.f2(1,2)"
100000 loops, best of 3: 2.4 usec per loop
$ python -m timeit -s"import minmax as mm" "mm.f3(1,2)"
1000000 loops, best of 3: 1.16 usec per loop
$ python -m timeit -s"import minmax as mm" "mm.f4(1,2)"
100000 loops, best of 3: 1.2 usec per loop
$ python -m timeit -s"import minmax as mm" "mm.f5(1,2)"
1000000 loops, best of 3: 1.58 usec per loop
$ python -m timeit -s"import minmax as mm" "mm.f1(2,1)"
100000 loops, best of 3: 1.88 usec per loop
$ python -m timeit -s"import minmax as mm" "mm.f2(2,1)"
100000 loops, best of 3: 2.39 usec per loop
$ python -m timeit -s"import minmax as mm" "mm.f3(2,1)"
1000000 loops, best of 3: 1.18 usec per loop
$ python -m timeit -s"import minmax as mm" "mm.f4(2,1)"
1000000 loops, best of 3: 1.25 usec per loop
$ python -m timeit -s"import minmax as mm" "mm.f5(2,1)"
1000000 loops, best of 3: 1.44 usec per loop