how to find the minum string in a list code example

Example 1: python min length list of strings

strings = ["some", "example", "words", "that", "i", "am", "fond", "of"]
print min(strings, key=len) 
# prints "i"

Example 2: python return min length of list

a = [[1,0,1,2,1,1,1,3111111], [31,1,4,51,1,1,1], [1,1,6,7,8]]

print min(a, key=len)
# [1, 1, 6, 7, 8]

print len(min(a, key=len))
# 5

print min(map(len, a))
# 5