Length of string in sublist within a list python

Question

I have a list of sublists of anagrams such as

L = [['terrible', 'elbirret'],
     ['supermonster', 'retsnomrepus'],
     ['you', 'uoy', 'oyu'],
     ['pears', 'reaps', 'spear', 'spera']]

How do I write a function that will give me the sublist or anagram group that has the longest anagrams.

i.e. if the list were

L = [['spear', 'pears', 'reaps'], ['monster', 'sternom']]

it would give me

['monster', 'sternom']

So by "longest anagram" do you mean the anagram with the most letters or the anagram with the most possible combinations? — Jacob Bridges
– Jacob Bridges, Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 3:53

falsetru · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-11 11:55:23Z

4

Using max with a key function to get the list with longest strings:

>>> L = [['spear', 'pears', 'reaps'], ['monster', 'sternom']]
>>> max(L, key=lambda xs: len(xs[0]))
['monster', 'sternom']

UPDATE

What if there were multiple sublists with longest of the same length?

Find the maximum length. Filter sublist based on the length:

>>> L = [['largest', 'artlegs'], ['spear', 'pears', 'reaps'], ['monster', 'sternom']]
>>> M = max(len(xs[0]) for xs in L)
>>> [xs for xs in L if len(xs[0]) == M]
[['largest', 'artlegs'], ['monster', 'sternom']]

edited Dec 11, 2014 at 11:55

answered Dec 11, 2014 at 3:53

falsetru

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2 Comments

joe smite Over a year ago

Thank you so much! I had one more question. What if there were multiple sublists with longest of the same length? How would I get it to print the multiple sublists out?

Marcin Over a year ago

You can alwyas flatten your list before processing its values.

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