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How to Find the Nearest Value to a Target in a Sorted List in Python

Use bisect to binary-search a sorted list and return the element closest to a target value.

bisect binary-search sorted-list
Python 
import bisect

def nearest_value(sorted_list, target):
    if not sorted_list:
        return None
    pos = bisect.bisect_left(sorted_list, target)
    if pos == 0:
        return sorted_list[0]
    if pos == len(sorted_list):
        return sorted_list[-1]
    before = sorted_list[pos - 1]
    after = sorted_list[po…
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