Question

I’m newish to Python (and stackoverflow)…bear with me! I have a dictionary that looks like this:

valueDict[i] = [x,y]

I want to find the minimum key based on the sum of x and y. I know for a dictionary of values I can use:

minVal = min(valueDict, key=valueDict.get)

But I don’t think I can modify this approach for a dict of lists.

Answer 1

You can provide any function for the key argument of min. For a dictionary of values you do

minVal = min(dict, key=dict.get) # note no parentheses

If you wanted to the minimum based on the sum, you might do

minVal = min(dict, key=lambda i: sum(dict[i]))