How to find the largest element in an array in Python

Given an array with numerical values, the largest element can be found in multiple ways.

Solution

We can use solve this problem in the following ways in Python:

  1. Using a for-in loop
  2. Using max()
  3. Using sort()

1. Using a for-in loop

  • We will use a for-in loop and a variable that stores the largest element to solve this.
  • Initialize a list lst with [20, 49, 1, 99].
  • Initialize the largest variable with the first element in the list.
  • Use the for-in loop to traverse every element in the list, and check if the current element i is greater than the value present in the largest variable.
  • If it is, then assign the value in i to the variable largest.
  • After the loop ends, largest will store the largest element in the list.
#initialize list

lst = [20, 49, 1, 99]



#initialize largest with first element

largest = lst[0]



#traverse the array

for i in lst:

    if i>largest:

        largest = i



print(largest)

2. Using max()

We will use Python’s built-in function max() to solve this problem.

  • We will pass the list lst as a parameter to the function max(), which returns the largest element in the list.
#initialize list
lst = [20, 49, 1, 99]
#returns largest element
largest = max(lst)
#print largest in the list
print(largest)

3. Using sort()

We will use the sort() method to solve this.

  • Initialize the list lst with [20, 99, 1, 49].
  • Sort the list lst with lst.sort(), which sorts the original list in ascending order.
  • Since it is in ascending order, the last element lst[-1] in the list is the largest. Print it.
#initialize list
lst = [20, 99, 1, 49]
#sort the list
lst.sort()
#print last element which is largest
print(lst[-1])

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