Originally Posted by jrcagle

I'm a little confused about the use of the "num" variable.

I would probably do this:

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import urllib
import csv
temp_url = urllib.urlopen("http://app.lms.unimelb.edu.au/bbcswebdav/courses/600151_2008_1/datasets/finance/asx_2007.csv")
data = csv.reader(temp_url)
header = data.next()
earnings = [(row[0], float(row[6])) for row in data]
earnings.sort(key = lambda x: x[1])
earnings.reverse()
earnings = earnings[:10]

import urllib import csv temp_url = urllib.urlopen("http://app.lms.unimelb.edu.au/bbcswebdav/courses/600151_2008_1/datasets/finance/asx_2007.csv") data = csv.reader(temp_url) header = data.next() earnings = [(row[0], float(row[6])) for row in data] earnings.sort(key = lambda x: x[1]) earnings.reverse() earnings = earnings[:10]

line 6 generates a list of the companies and their earnings. Line 7 sorts these using the earnings as the key. Line 8 puts the highest earnings first. And line 9 trims the list to the top 10.

HTH,
Jeff