Short Python Code to say "Pick the lower value"?

print(min(a, b))

You're not hugely clear about what you want, so some alternatives. Given the following two lists:

a = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]b = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]

To print the shortest list, you can just do..

>>> print(min(a, b))[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]

To get the shortest length as an number, you can either min the len() of each list, or do len(min()) (both are identical, choose which ever you find most readable)..

>>> print(min( len(a), len(b) ))# or..>>> print(len( min(a, b) ))8

To print the lowest value in either list, you can supply the list as a single argument to min()

>>> a.extend(b) # Appends b to a>>> print a[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]>>> print(min(a))1

Finally, another possibility, the list that has the lowest values in total:

>>> max( sum(a), sum(b) )55

To print the actual list with the highest sum(), you could either use the ternary operator, like..

>>> print a if sum(a) > sum(b) else b[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

..although I never really liked (or use) it, instead using the slight longer, regular if/else statements..

>>> if sum(a) > sum(b):...     print a... else:...     print b... [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

If the length of the list is what makes it lower (not its values), then you actually want:

min(a, b, key=len)

which is only incidentally equivalent to

min(a, b)

in the given example.