如何在我的程序生成的某些列表中找到最小的列表？

Question

I wrote a program that generates some lists, something like

['a0', 'a1', 'a2', 'a3', 'a3', 'a4', 'C', 'b4', 'b3', 'b2', 'b2', 'b3', 'b4', 'b5', 'b5', 'b4', 'D', 'c4']
['a0', 'a1', 'a2', 'a3', 'a3', 'a4', 'C', 'b4', 'b3', 'b2', 'b2', 'b3', 'b4', 'D', 'c4', 'c4', 'D', 'b4', 'b5']
['a0', 'a1', 'a2', 'a3', 'a3', 'a4', 'C', 'b4', 'b5', 'b5', 'b4', 'b3', 'b2', 'b2', 'b3', 'b4', 'D', 'c4']
['a0', 'a1', 'a2', 'a3', 'a3', 'a4', 'C', 'b4', 'b5', 'b5', 'b4', 'D', 'c4', 'c4', 'D', 'b4', 'b3', 'b2']
['a0', 'a1', 'a2', 'a3', 'a3', 'a4', 'C', 'b4', 'D', 'c4', 'c4', 'D', 'b4', 'b3', 'b2', 'b2', 'b3', 'b4', 'b5']
['a0', 'a1', 'a2', 'a3', 'a3', 'a4', 'C', 'b4', 'D', 'c4', 'c4', 'D', 'b4', 'b5', 'b5', 'b4', 'b3', 'b2']

and I want to find the shortest list, the list that has the minimum number of elements

thanks,

Answer 1

You can use the min function:

min(data, key = len)

If you want to handle cases where there are multiple elements having the shortest length, you can sort the list in ascending order by length:

sorted(data, key = len)

Answer 2

You can sort it by list length then get the first element but this won't take into account lists that all have the same length.

smallest_list = sorted(list_of_list, key=len)[0]

Another would be get the length of the smallest list then use that as a filter

len_smallest_list = min(len(x) for x in list_of_list)
smallest_list = [list for list in list_of_list if len(list) == len_smallest_list]