I was wondering if there was a function built into Python that can determine the distance between two rational numbers but without me telling it which number is larger. e.g.
>>>distance(6,3) 3 >>>distance(3,6) 3
Obviously I could write a simple definition to calculate which is larger and then just do a simple subtraction:
def distance(x, y): if x >= y: result = x - y else: result = y - x return result
but I'd rather not have to call a custom function like this. From my limited experience I've often found Python has a built in function or a module that does exactly what you want and quicker than your code does it. Hopefully someone can tell me there is a built in function that can do this.