I think this would be faster than sorting. Assuming sorting takes O(nlogn) time, and removal takes O(n) time, O(n) < O(nlogn), hence it would be more efficient. Since we shouldn't modify the original array we can make a copy.

good to know. compared to sorted?

I did it the exact same way, seems the more logit but not the fastest! Anyone has tips to improve your coding abilities for speed??

.remove() takes a lot of time.

Nicely done, we could further refactor by using min(numbers) directly in the return statement for second_min

Thank you. I was also looking for a one-liner for my solution.
I refreshed on pop() vs remove().

This is the most readable solution.
Much better than the top one.

Eh, I like this much really much.

Your parens and iparens are really intriguing. I'm impressed.
But I'm not sure it's a recommendable way because it's hard.

The problem specifically stated to not treat other delimiters as parentheses, though I guess it didn't test for it so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i dont see that mentioned in the instructions! although I agree that original list should not be changed. But it's not written in instructions

You should 'nt touch the original Array/List

From my understanding of python, when you remove an item from a list, python moves every number down. If the smallest number on the list is the one at index 0 then you have to move the whole list. It will still be in linear time, but it would be more efficient if you follow the directions and don't modify the list.