How can if/elif/else be replaced with min() and max()?

Question

Working on an exercise from MIT's OpenCourseWare 6.01SC. Problem 3.1.5:

Define a function clip(lo, x, hi) that returns lo if x is less than lo, returns hi if x is greater than hi, and returns x otherwise. You can assume that lo < hi. ...don't use if, but use min and max.

Reformulated in English, if x is the least of the arguments, return lo; if x is the greatest of the arguments, return hi; otherwise, return x. Thus:

def clip(lo, x, hi):
    if min(lo, x, hi) == x:
        return lo
    elif max(lo, x, hi) == x:
        return hi
    else:
        return x

Maybe I am not understanding the problem correctly, but I can't figure out how to return a result without using if at all. How can the function be modified to remove the if/elif/else statements?

Link to original problem 3.1.5

Link to previous problem 3.1.4 (for context)

EDIT:

Comments/answers to this question helped me realize that my original plain English reformulation wasn't a great way to think about the problem. A better way to think about it would have been to determine which of the arguments is between the other two.

Answer 1

One line of code:

#! python3.8

def clip(lo, x, hi):
    return max(min(x, hi), lo)

print(clip(1, 2, 3))
print(clip(2, 1, 3))
print(clip(1, 3, 2))

# Output
# 2
# 2
# 2