Write a function, max index, that takes a list as a parameter and returns the index of the largest number in the list. When writing the function, you are given the following rules:

• You are not allowed to use the max function
• You are not allowed to use any list methods
• You must use a Pythonic FOR loop. This means you CANNOT use the range function or enumerate function in your loop
• If the largest number appears more than once, you should return the smallest index

This is so wrong because it fails to loop through the list and I also don't know how to compare the two indexes in case the largest value appears more than once in the list.

def max_index(lon):
  """
  input is a list of numbers.
  returns the index of the largest number in the list
  """
  max = lon[0]
  index = 0 
  for n in lon:
    if n>max:
      max = n
    index =1
  return index

CodePudding user response：

This might not be the most effecient approach, but I'm pretty sure this would work:

def max_index(lon):
    current_index = 0
    largest_index = 0
    max = 0
    for item in lon:
        if item > max:
            max = item
            largest_index = current_index
        current_index  = 1
    return largest_index

CodePudding user response：

Here is one solution. If this is a homework question, you wont learn without trying, so try out different solutions starting with the for loop. Good luck!

def max_index(lon):
    max_val=0
    counter=0
    max_index=0
    for num in lon:
        if num > max_val:
            max_val = num
            max_index = counter
        counter = counter   1
    return max_index