How to find smallest sub-list in a list of list that also includes integers

Question

Basically, i have a board of size N (lets say 4) with the biggest elements inside also of size N. I need to find the length of the smallest list in each row like in the following example: row = [[1, 2, 4], [1, 2, 4], 3, [1, 2]] should return the length of [1,2] and the index of that sublist but it returns an error because 3 is before it

I've written this

def full(puzzle):
    min = 0
    for i in range(len(puzzle)):
           for j in range(1 ,len(puzzle)):
               if isinstance(puzzle[i][j] , list):
                   if len(puzzle[i][j-1]) < len(puzzle[i][j]):
                       min = len(puzzle[i][j-1])
                       pos = (i , j-1)
    return pos

But the code doesnt work when j-1 is not a list. How would i make it so the function would compare the length of puzzle[i][j] to j-2, (or 3 if j-1 and j-2 are also not lists etc..)

edit: and since row is in board, id love for the code to return the index of both the row and column.

Answer 1

Try using the key attribute of min somehow like this

row = [[1, 2, 4], [1, 2, 4], 3, [1, 2]]
def func(item):
    return len(item) if type(item)==list else 999
sublist=min(row,key=func)
print('index of smallest list=',row.index(sublist))
print('length of smallest list=',len(sublist))