How to get the smallest number in a Table with Lua

Question

I'm not great at programming and new to Lua. Can someone help explain the logic of what I should be doing as simply as possible, please? I have a Table populated with values and need to return the min number, in this case -9. I know I need to use the math.min, but am not sure how to use it correctly. This is a simplified version of the code I'm working with but trying to figure out the basics so I can hopefully do the rest myself. Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

e.g.:

local test_1 = {2, 7, -9, 0, 27, 36, 16}

function min()
    print(math.min(test_1))
end

min()

Answer 1

kikito's solution is limited. It will fail for big tables with many thousand elements as Lua cannot unpack too many values.

Here's the straight forward solution. Traverse over the table and remember the smallest value.

local min = math.huge
for i = 1, #test_1  do
  min = min < test_1[i] and min or test_1[i]
end
print(min)

A bit slower due to function calls

for i,v in ipairs(test_1) do
  min = math.min(min, v)
end
print(min)

Also possible but slow, sort the table ascending. your first element is the minimum.

table.sort(test_1)
print(test_1[1])