With list ls and 3 towns to visit they can make a choice between: [50,55,57],[50,55,58],[50,55,60],[

With list ls and 3 towns to visit they can make a choice between: [50,55,57],[50,55,58],[50,55,60],[50,57,58],[50,57,60],[50,58,60],[55,57,58],[55,57,60],[55,58,60],[57,58,60].

The sums of distances are then: 162, 163, 165, 165, 167, 168, 170, 172, 173, 175.

The biggest possible sum taking a limit of 174 into account is then 173 and the distances of the 3 corresponding towns is [55, 58, 60].

The function chooseBestSum (or choose_best_sum or … depending on the language) will take as parameters t (maximum sum of distances, integer >= 0), k (number of towns to visit, k >= 1) and ls (list of distances, all distances are positive or null integers and this list has at least one element). The function returns the “best” sum ie the biggest possible sum of k distances less than or equal to the given limit t, if that sum exists, or otherwise nil, null, None, Nothing, depending on the language. With C++, C, Rust, Swift, Go, Kotlin return -1.

from itertools import combinations

def choose_best_sum(t, k, ls):
    return max((s for s in (sum(dists) for dists in combinations(ls, k)) if s <= t), default=None)