Python - How to find an item in a list

Question

...and compare it with another list to get the same item in the same index/position.

Eg.

a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

b = [a, b, c, d, e]

I want the highest number in list a so:

5

And then, I compare it with list b to get the item, which is on the same position as the highest number in list a :

e

I apologize for the poorly worded question but this is the best I can explain it.

Answer 1

One-liner: b[a.index(max(a))]

However, this makes two pass through the list, ie first with max(a) , and second with a.index .

The snippet below makes only one pass:

max_index, max_value = max(enumerate(a), key=lambda p: p[1])
print(b[max_index])

Answer 2

python has this great built in array function called index that will take care of what you need.

in your example: x = b[a.index(5)] which takes a and gets the index of 5 (which is 4) and then assigns the item in b at that index to the variable x so that you can do whatever evaluations you may need.