Is there any predefined function in C to find the minimum or maximum element from a given array?

Question

I have an array: int a[6] = {3, 4, 1, 2, 5, 6} and I want to find the minimum and maximum element by using a pre-defined C function; is there one?

Answer 1

No, there isn't a minmax function in the standard library, but you could create one yourself.

Example:

#include <limits.h>
#include <stddef.h>
#include <stdio.h>

// a struct to hold the min and max result
typedef struct {
    int min;
    int max;
} mm;

// a function to find the min and max values
mm minmax(const int *arr, size_t len) {

    mm res = {INT_MAX, INT_MIN}; // start with min = INT_MAX, max = INT_MIN

    for(const int *end = arr + len; arr != end; ++arr) {
        if(*arr < res.min) res.min = *arr;
        if(*arr > res.max) res.max = *arr;
    }

    return res;
}

int main() {
    int a[6] = {3, 4, 1, 2, 5, 6};
    mm res = minmax(a, sizeof a / sizeof *a);
    printf("min: %d  max: %d\n", res.min, res.max);
}

---

---

This could be generalized into a function that can find the min and max elements in any type of array, much like the qsort function can sort an array of any type of elements that are comparable in a strict weak ordering kind of way.

#include <stddef.h>

// a struct to hold pointers to the min and max elements
typedef struct {
    const void *min;
    const void *max;
} mm;

// The signature of a function for comparing elements.
// Such a function should return
// -1 if the left hand side is less than the right
// +1 if the right hand side is greater than the left
//  0 otherwise

typedef int (*comp_func)(const void *, const void *);

// the minmax function now takes these arguments:
// in_arr : a "const void*" to the array
// count  : the number of elements
// size   : the size of an element
// compare: a pointer to a function capable of comparing two elements

mm minmax(const void *in_arr, size_t count, size_t size, comp_func compare) {
    mm res = {0}; // both the min and max pointers a NULL

    if(count) {
        // "cur" and "end" are here pointers to "const char[size]" elements,
        // so "++cur" will step "size" bytes in memory:
        const char (*cur)[size] = in_arr;
        const char (*end)[size] = cur + count;

        res.min = cur; // use the pointer to the first value as the pointer to min...
        res.max = cur; // ...and max

        for(++cur; cur != end; ++cur) {
            // call the compare function
            if(compare(cur, res.max) == 1) res.max = cur;
            else if(compare(cur, res.min) == -1) res.min = cur;
        }
    }
    return res;
}

With that minmax function in place, you could use it for an array of int or any type. You just have to supply a function to do the actual comparison of two elements.

Example:

#include <stdio.h>

int int_compare(const void *lhs, const void *rhs) {
    return *((int*)lhs) < *((int*)rhs) ? -1 :
           *((int*)lhs) > *((int*)rhs) ?  1 : 0;
}

int main() {
    int a[6] = {3, 4, 1, 2, 5, 6};
    mm res = minmax(a, sizeof a / sizeof *a, sizeof *a, int_compare);

    // dereference the min and max pointers to get the values:
    printf("min: %d  max: %d\n", *((int*)res.min), *(int*)res.max);
}

Answer 2

No there is no standard C function. But You can do this yourself

int max = arr[0];
for (i = 1; i < n; i++)
    if (arr[i] > max)
        max = arr[i];

Whether it's big or small is obvious from the comparison inside the if. if >, is large. if <, is small