built in function for computing overlap in Python

Question

is there a built in function to compute the overlap between two discrete intervals, e.g. the overlap between [10, 15] and [20, 38]? In that case the overlap is 0. If it's [10, 20], [15, 20], the overlap is 5.

Answer 1

You can use max and min:

>>> def getOverlap(a, b):
...     return max(0, min(a[1], b[1]) - max(a[0], b[0]))

>>> getOverlap([10, 25], [20, 38])
5
>>> getOverlap([10, 15], [20, 38])
0