3.13. Range of

In mathematics, range is defined as the difference between the largest and the smallest values in a set of values. Implement a function named range_of that takes a list of integers and returns the range of it as an integer. The elements in list are not necessarily in ascending order. You cannot use built-in functions \(\color{purple}{\texttt{min()}}\) or \(\color{purple}{\texttt{max()}}\).

Sample I/O:

>>> range_of([1, 4, 6, 28, -10, 0, 0, 1])
38

>>> range_of([1])
0

>>> range_of([2, 2])
0

Show the Answer

# as the non-trivial solution
def range_of(lst):
    min_elem, max_elem = lst[0], lst[0]
    for elem in lst[1:]:
        if elem < min_elem:
            min_elem = elem
        elif elem > max_elem:
            max_elem = elem
    return max_elem - min_elem