Why does this work? Shouldn't it return the smallest value?

July 12, 2022

I have this loop that I wrote to find the smallest number in an arbutrary list:

arbitrary=[44,999,20,55,13,21]
smallest=None
for i in arbitrary:
 if smallest is None:
   smallest=i
 elif smallest>i:
   smallest=i
print(smallest)

When I run the code, it gives me the correct value. However, shouldn’t it be:

elif smallest<i:
  smallest=i

When it checks to see if the next value is the smallest, it should be checking to see if i is smaller than the current i value. But running elif smallest <i gives me the largest value, 999

I think I’m missing something obvious about how the loop is iterating over arbitrary, but it’s just not clicking. What am I missing, and why does the original code work?

>Solution :

In plain english what your elif statement is saying is that IF the smallest number in that iteration of the loop is BIGGER than the i-value then it is no longer the smallest number. This gets replaced by the i value. using a print statement in the loop can help you troubleshoot to understand what’s happening.

arbitrary=[44,999,20,55,13,21]
smallest=None
for i in arbitrary:
 print(smallest)
 if smallest is None:
   smallest=i
 elif smallest>i:
   smallest=i
print(smallest)

the output of this code