Compare and grab items attributes

Question

I have 3 locators in my scene, eg.
Locator01 - localScaleY value of 1
Locator02 - localScaleY value of 2
Locator03 - localScaleY value of 3

Each with a varying value in its localScaleY. I had wanted to compare this 3 Locators' localScaleY values and grab the one which is the highest (in this case it will be Locator03)

yMax = []
for yValue in pm.ls('locator*'):
    yMax.append(getAttr (yValue +'.localScaleY'))
    yMaxValue = max(yMax)
    print yMaxValue

So based on the above coding, is it a viable way to write as I will be comparing more items? Or perhaps there is a better way?

Answer 1

Build a generator of scale/object tuples, and take the max of that. By putting the scale first, max keys off that correctly.

locators = ((getAttr(locator+'.localScaleY'), locator) for locator in pm.ls('locator*'))
yMaxValue, locator = max(locators)

A few outputs for reference:

>>> list(locators)
# Result: [(1.0, nt.Transform(u'locator01')),
           (2.0, nt.Transform(u'locator02')),
           (3.0, nt.Transform(u'locator03')),
           (1.0, nt.Locator(u'locator0Shape1')),
           (2.0, nt.Locator(u'locator0Shape2')),
           (3.0, nt.Locator(u'locator0Shape3'))] # 
>>> yMaxValue
# Result: 3.0 # 
>>> locator
# Result: nt.Locator(u'locator0Shape3') # 

Answer 2

Whereas mhlester's answer works, I don't see the reason for a generator her. I would simply max() the list.

maxLoc = max(l.localScaleY for l in locs)
print '{} has the highest value in localScaleY: {}'.format(maxLoc.split('.')[0], maxLoc.get())