Get largest value from array without sorting

Question

I am creating a somewhat simple game, and I need to keep track of what players have what score. 25 people will be playing this game at one time, these players will be put into an array:

public static int[] allPlayers = new int[25];

Depending on a correct answer, the current player will earn 100 points, let's say. So, if player 1 were up, the code would be something similar to the following:

allPlayers[0] += 100;

If player 3 were up, the code on a correct answer would be:

allPlayers[2] += 100;

At the end of the game, I want to determine which player has the accumulated the most amount of points. Please note that I cannot simply sort this array because I need the order of the array to remain intact. If the order is not left intact, I will not be able to tell which player had which points to his/her name.

I'm interested to hear what you all have to say and I look forward to your responses.

Thank you very much,

Evan

Answer 1

No need to sort, just iterate through the array, keeping track of the largest value seen so far and the index of that value.

  var largest = -1;
  var player = -1;
  for (var i = 0; i < allPlayers.Length; ++i)
  {
       if (allPlayers[i] > largest)
       {
           player = i;
           largest = allPlayers[i];
       }
  }

  Console.WriteLine( "Player {0} wins, with score {1}", player, largest );

Handling ties is left as an exercise.