How to find the index of the furthest item in a list

Question

Leetcode has a question to calculate the max distance between taken and empty seats in a list. I'm having trouble trying to get the index of the seat that is furthest away from a seat taken. The current code calculates the max distance, just not the index of the seat that is furthest away. [1,0,0,0,1,0,1] would be an example list. 1 is a seat taken and 0 is empty.

person_idx = None
last_idx = len(seats) - 1
dist = 0

# scan for each seats
for cur_idx, seat in enumerate(seats):
    # this seat is taken by someone
    if seat == 1:
        if person_idx is None:
            # No person on the left, Alex seat on left hand side
            dist = max(dist, cur_idx)
        else:
            # Surrounded by two person, Alex seat on the middle
            dist = max(dist, (cur_idx - person_idx) // 2)
        person_idx = cur_idx
        print(person_idx)

    # No person on the right, Alex seat on the right hand side
dist = max(dist, last_idx - person_idx)

print(dist)

Answer 1

Here is the way to get the furthest index of 1 (or 0):

seat = [1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1]
rev = list(reversed(seat))

index = len(seat) - rev.index(1) - 1
# rev.index() can be used with 1 or 0, depending on what you are looking for

The index of the furthest seat is given by the index variable.