title: how to compare two values and keep the lowest one
body: <p>I'm trying to find a way to keep the lowest value from a series of comparisons inside of a variable in python.</p>
  
  <p>something like </p>
  
  <pre><code>"if newvalue is lower than storagevalue then storagevalue now is newvalue" 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and so on.</p>
  
  <p>I thought to just stuff all them inside a list and then to keep the lowest, but it have to be done inside of a process which could become really memory-taking so I wanted to find a less "hungry" solution, avoiding to keep a lot of really big numbers.</p>
  
  <p>The problem I see is that I don't know how to manage the storagevalue in the first place. I cannot just declare it as an empty variable and then compare it with a new value; neither I can assign a dummy value as 'x' in the meantime, it doesn't work.</p>
  
  <p>maybe I'm just thinking the wrong way, I'm just starting to learn Python,</p>
  
  <p>thanks</p>