Hello there! This article is for beginners who wish to understand the basic code for finding the smallest number in Python. So let’s begin. We aim to find the smallest number in Python of all the numbers given in a list. Say if the list is: [32, 54, 67, 21] The output should be: 21 In this article, we will understand 3
different methods to do this. Min() is a built-in function in python that takes a list as an argument and returns the smallest number in the list. An example is given below- #declaring a list
list1 = [-1, 65, 49, 13, -27]
print ("list = ", list1)
#finding smallest number
s_num = min (list1)
print ("The smallest number in the given list is ", s_num)
Output: list = [-1, 65, 49, 13, -27]
The smallest number in the given list is -27
This is one of the simplest methods to find the smallest number. All you need to do is
to pass the list to min() as an argument. Sort()is another inbuilt method in python that doesn’t return the smallestnumber of the list. Instead, it sorts the list in ascending order. So by sorting the list, we can access the first element of the list using indexing and that will be the
smallest number in that list. Let’s see the code: #declaring a list
list1 = [17, 53, 46, 8, 71]
print ("list = ", list1)
#sorting the list
list1.sort ()
#printing smallest number
print ("The smallest number in the given list is ", list1[0])
Output: list = [17, 53, 46, 8, 71]
The smallest number in the given list is 8
ls1 = []
total_ele = int (input (" How many elements you want to enter? "))
#getting list from the user
for i in range (total_ele):
n =int (input ("Enter a number:"))
ls1.append(n)
print (ls1)
min = ls1[0]
#finding smallest number
for i in range (len (ls1)):
if ls1[i] < min:
min = ls1[i]
print ("The smallest element is ", min)
In the above code, we are using two for loops, one for getting the elements of the list from the user and the second one for finding the smallest number from the list. After getting the
elements from the user, we define the first element of the list (at 0 index) as the smallest number (min). Then with the for loop, we compare each element of the list to the min and if any element is smaller than min, it becomes the new min. This is how we get the smallest number from the user-given list. The output for the above code is:1. Using Python min()
2. Using Python sort()
3. Using the ‘for’ loop
How many elements you want to enter? 4 Enter a number: 15 Enter a number: 47 Enter a number: 23 Enter a number: 6 [15, 47, 23, 6] The smallest number is 6
Conclusion
So, these were some methods to find the smallest number from the given list in python. Hope you understood this! Feel free to ask questions below, if any. Thank you! 🙂
We are given a list of numbers and our task is to write a Python program to find the smallest number in given list. For the following program we can use various methods including the built-in min method, sorting the array and returning the last element, etc.
Example:
Sorting the list to find smallest number in a list
In Ascending order
Here writing a Python program where we are sorting the entire list and then returning the first element as it’ll be the smallest element present in the list.
Python3
list1 = [10, 20, 4, 45, 99]
list1.sort()
print("Smallest element is:", list1[0])
Output:
smallest element is: 4In Descending order
Here we are sorting using the sort() function the entire list and then returning the last element as it’ll be the smallest element present in the list.
Python3
list1 = [10, 20, 4, 45, 99]
list1.sort(reverse=True)
print("Smallest element is:", list1[-1])
Output:
smallest element is: 4Using min() Method to find smallest number in a list
Here we are using the min Method and then returning the smallest element present in the list.
Python3
list1 = [10, 20, 1, 45, 99]
print("Smallest element is:", min(list1))
Output:
Smallest element is: 1Find minimum list element for a user defined list
Python3
list1 = []
num = int(input("Enter number of elements in list: "))
for i in range(1, num + 1):
ele= int(input("Enter elements: "))
list1.append(ele)
print("Smallest element is:", min(list1))
Output:
Enter number of elements in list: 4 Enter elements: 12 Enter elements: 19 Enter elements: 11 Enter elements: 99 Smallest element is: 11Find the smallest element in list comparing every element
Python3
l=[ int(l) for l in input("List:").split(",")]
print("The list is ",l)
min1 = l[0]
for i in range(len(l)):
if l[i] < min1:
min1 = l[i]
print("The smallest element in the list is ",min1)
Input:
List: 23,-1,45,22.6,78,100,-5Output:
The list is ['23', '-1', '45', '22.6', '78', '100','-5'] The smallest element in the list is -5Using the lambda function to find smallest number in a list
Here we are using the lambda function to print the smallest number present in the list.
Python3
lst = [20, 10, 20, 1, 100]
print(min(lst, key=lambda value: int(value)) )
Output:
1Using the enumerate function to find smallest number in a list
Here we are iterating over the list using the enumerate() function and returning the last element.
Python3
lst = [20, 10, 20, 1, 100]
a,i = min((a,i) for (i,a) in enumerate(lst))
print(a)
Output:
1