On Mon, 17 Feb 2003 11:44:11 -0600, "Mark McEahern" <mark@[...].com>  wrote:

> How do you detetermine the longest sequence?  Naive use of max doesn't work
> (for this):
> 
>   >>> max('1111', '222')
>   '222'
> 
> so I came up with this:
> 
>   def longest(*args):
>       sorted = list(args)
>       sorted.sort(lambda x, y: cmp(len(x), len(y)))
>       return sorted[-1]
> 
> Comments?
> 

 > >> def longest(seq): return reduce(max, map(len, seq))
 ...
 > >> aSeq = '1111', '222'
 > >> longest(aSeq)
 4

Regards,
Bengt Richter
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