Whats the right way to refactor this Big if/elif/elif ?

[ichabod801]

The first thing I think of is to make a list like so:

dists = [(forward, 'forward'), (left, 'left'), ..., (narrow_r3, 'narrow_r3')]
dists.sort()
closest_dir = dists[0][1]

But then there is the question of building the list. Could you convert your calculations into one function with parameters?

directions = (('left', [359, 0, 15]), ('right', [270, 271, 15], ...)
distances = [(dist_calc(*parameters), direction) for direction, parameters in direction]