Using Python's max to return two equally large values

Solution 1:

Idea is to find max value and get all keys corresponding to that value:

count = {'a': 120, 'b': 120, 'c': 100}

highest = max(count.values())

print([k for k, v in count.items() if v == highest])

Solution 2:

Same idea as Asterisk, but without iterating over the list twice. Bit more verbose.

count = { 'a': 120, 'b': 120, 'c': 100 }
answers = []
highest = -1

def f(x):
    global highest, answers
    if count[x] > highest:
        highest = count[x]
        answers = [x]
    elif count[x] == highest:
        answers.append(x)

map(f, count.keys())
print answers

Solution 3:

Fast single pass:

a = { 'a': 120, 'b': 120, 'c': 100 }
z = [0]
while a:
    key, value = a.popitem()
    if value > z[0]:
        z = [value,[key]]
    elif value == z[0]:
        z[1].append(key)

print z
#output:
[120, ['a', 'b']]

And an amusing way with defaultdict:

import collections
b = collections.defaultdict(list)
for key, value in a.iteritems():
    b[value].append(key)
print max(b.items())
#output:
(120, ['a', 'b'])