python中怎么找出列表中最小的元素_在列表中查找最小元素（递归）-Python

I'm trying to find the minimum value in a list of integers using recursion. The main idea is that if the list is only one element long, this element is my minimum.

Else, I divide the list onto two smaller lists of the same size, look for minimum value in both of them and then compare which one is smaller.

The code looks like this:

def minimum(a,l,p):

if l == p:

return a[l]

else:

m1 = minimum(a,l, (l+p)/2)

m2 = minimum(a, (l+p)/2 + 1, p)

if m1 < m2:

return m1

else:

return m2

It doesn't seem to be difficult, however when I tried to run this function for a sample list, I got the following error: "RecursionError: maximum recursion depth exceeded in comparison".

Is something wrong with the algorithm or maybe I should look somewhere else for the reason fo this problem?

解决方案

In the end, I believe this is just an example on how to iterate through a list using recursion rather than using a loop and used for learning purposes. You can continuously split the list into halves until you get a list of length 1, which is when you surface the element. If you're doing this for learning purposes, I suggest you add print() statements to see what your list is doing.

def minimum(lst):

if len(lst) == 1:

return lst[0]

else:

m1 = minimum(lst[0:len(lst) / 2])

m2 = minimum(lst[len(lst) / 2:])

if m1 < m2:

return m1

else:

return m2

if __name__ == "__main__":

print(minimum([3, 4, 1, 2, 5]))

print(minimum([3, 2, 1, 0]))

But as @HFBrowning mentioned in a comment, in real life you should just use min(lst) and be done with it.

And as @PatrickHaugh mentioned in a comment to this answer, the division must return an integer. Which means, if you're running this on Python 3, you should change the len(lst) / 2 to len(lst) // 2 (see the double /?)