Finding the two closest numbers in a list using sorting

Question

If I am given a list of integers/floats, how would I find the two closest numbers using sorting?

Answer 1

Such a method will do what you want:

>>> def minDistance(lst):
    lst = sorted(lst)
    index = -1
    distance = max(lst) - min(lst)
    for i in range(len(lst)-1):
        if lst[i+1] - lst[i] < distance:
            distance = lst[i+1] - lst[i] 
            index = i
    for i in range(len(lst)-1):
        if lst[i+1] - lst[i] == distance:
            print lst[i],lst[i+1]

In the first for loop we find out the minimum distance, and in the second loop, we print all the pairs with this distance. Works as below:

>>> lst = (1,2,3,6,12,9,1.4,145,12,83,53,12,3.4,2,7.5)
>>> minDistance(lst)
2 2
12 12
12 12
>>>