6-01: Model Solution: What if the largest number is smaller than 0?

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
65/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
python
Domain
content

Research direction

Inspect the model solution for exercise 6-01 and reproduce the behavior with a list containing only negative numbers. Update the solution so it returns the largest input number rather than 0, then verify that it still handles positive and mixed-number inputs.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

The model solution assigns 0 as the biggest number but the question didn't specify that the question will always have at least one non-negative number.

What if the list only have negative numbers?
In that case instead of returning the largest number, it will return 0.

def largest():
    with open("numbers.txt") as file:
        start = True
        biggest = 0
        for number in file:
            if start or int(number) > biggest:
                biggest = int(number)
                start = False
        return biggest

A simple solution would be to store the first number as the largest number instead. I am adding my solution but I believe this could be shortened:

def largest():
    with open("numbers.txt") as new_file:

        flag = True

        for line in new_file:
            line = int(line.replace("\n",""))

            #store the first value then skip all else
            if flag:
                largest_number = line
            flag = False

            if largest_number<line:
                largest_number = line
    return largest_number

if __name__ == "__main__":
    largest()
Dominant language
JavaScript
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77
Forks
30
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