From list of integers, get number closest to a given value

by

If we are not sure that the list is sorted, we could use the built-in min() function, to find the element which has the minimum distance from the specified number.

>>> min(myList, key=lambda x:abs(x-myNumber))
4

Note that it also works with dicts with int keys, like {1: "a", 2: "b"}. This method takes O(n) time.

If the list is already sorted, or you could pay the price of sorting the array once only, use the bisection method illustrated in @Lauritz’s answer which only takes O(log n) time (note however checking if a list is already sorted is O(n) and sorting is O(n log n).)

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