Smple way to get min & max

-7

1

You will take a set of input numbers, and output the minimum and maximum of the set. You can either write two programs, with 1 program doing each function, or one combined program.

Here's an example in Perl, 50 and 42 bytes (92 total):

Max:

sub mx {return ( reverse sort {$a <=> $b} @_ )[0]}

Min:

sub mn {return ( sort {$a <=> $b} @_ )[0]}

And a single program, 96:

sub mxmn {return ( reverse sort {$a <=> $b} @_ )[0] if shift; return ( sort {$a <=> $b} @_ )[0]}

Here's some more test cases.

Leaderboard

Here is a Stack Snippet to generate both a regular leaderboard and an overview of winners by language.

/* Configuration */

var QUESTION_ID = 4310; // Obtain this from the url
// It will be like https://XYZ.stackexchange.com/questions/QUESTION_ID/... on any question page
var ANSWER_FILTER = "!t)IWYnsLAZle2tQ3KqrVveCRJfxcRLe";
var COMMENT_FILTER = "!)Q2B_A2kjfAiU78X(md6BoYk";
var OVERRIDE_USER = 48934; // This should be the user ID of the challenge author.

/* App */

var answers = [], answers_hash, answer_ids, answer_page = 1, more_answers = true, comment_page;

function answersUrl(index) {
  return "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/questions/" +  QUESTION_ID + "/answers?page=" + index + "&pagesize=100&order=desc&sort=creation&site=codegolf&filter=" + ANSWER_FILTER;
}

function commentUrl(index, answers) {
  return "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/answers/" + answers.join(';') + "/comments?page=" + index + "&pagesize=100&order=desc&sort=creation&site=codegolf&filter=" + COMMENT_FILTER;
}

function getAnswers() {
  jQuery.ajax({
    url: answersUrl(answer_page++),
    method: "get",
    dataType: "jsonp",
    crossDomain: true,
    success: function (data) {
      answers.push.apply(answers, data.items);
      answers_hash = [];
      answer_ids = [];
      data.items.forEach(function(a) {
        a.comments = [];
        var id = +a.share_link.match(/\d+/);
        answer_ids.push(id);
        answers_hash[id] = a;
      });
      if (!data.has_more) more_answers = false;
      comment_page = 1;
      getComments();
    }
  });
}

function getComments() {
  jQuery.ajax({
    url: commentUrl(comment_page++, answer_ids),
    method: "get",
    dataType: "jsonp",
    crossDomain: true,
    success: function (data) {
      data.items.forEach(function(c) {
        if (c.owner.user_id === OVERRIDE_USER)
          answers_hash[c.post_id].comments.push(c);
      });
      if (data.has_more) getComments();
      else if (more_answers) getAnswers();
      else process();
    }
  });  
}

getAnswers();

var SCORE_REG = /<h\d>\s*([^\n,]*[^\s,]),.*?(\d+)(?=[^\n\d<>]*(?:<(?:s>[^\n<>]*<\/s>|[^\n<>]+>)[^\n\d<>]*)*<\/h\d>)/;

var OVERRIDE_REG = /^Override\s*header:\s*/i;

function getAuthorName(a) {
  return a.owner.display_name;
}

function process() {
  var valid = [];
  
  answers.forEach(function(a) {
    var body = a.body;
    a.comments.forEach(function(c) {
      if(OVERRIDE_REG.test(c.body))
        body = '<h1>' + c.body.replace(OVERRIDE_REG, '') + '</h1>';
    });
    
    var match = body.match(SCORE_REG);
    if (match)
      valid.push({
        user: getAuthorName(a),
        size: +match[2],
        language: match[1],
        link: a.share_link,
      });
    
  });
  
  valid.sort(function (a, b) {
    var aB = a.size,
        bB = b.size;
    return aB - bB
  });

  var languages = {};
  var place = 1;
  var lastSize = null;
  var lastPlace = 1;
  valid.forEach(function (a) {
    if (a.size != lastSize)
      lastPlace = place;
    lastSize = a.size;
    ++place;
    
    var answer = jQuery("#answer-template").html();
    answer = answer.replace("{{PLACE}}", lastPlace + ".")
                   .replace("{{NAME}}", a.user)
                   .replace("{{LANGUAGE}}", a.language)
                   .replace("{{SIZE}}", a.size)
                   .replace("{{LINK}}", a.link);
    answer = jQuery(answer);
    jQuery("#answers").append(answer);

    var lang = a.language;
    if (/<a/.test(lang)) lang = jQuery(lang).text();
    
    languages[lang] = languages[lang] || {lang: a.language, user: a.user, size: a.size, link: a.link};
  });

  var langs = [];
  for (var lang in languages)
    if (languages.hasOwnProperty(lang))
      langs.push(languages[lang]);

  langs.sort(function (a, b) {
    if (a.lang > b.lang) return 1;
    if (a.lang < b.lang) return -1;
    return 0;
  });

  for (var i = 0; i < langs.length; ++i)
  {
    var language = jQuery("#language-template").html();
    var lang = langs[i];
    language = language.replace("{{LANGUAGE}}", lang.lang)
                       .replace("{{NAME}}", lang.user)
                       .replace("{{SIZE}}", lang.size)
                       .replace("{{LINK}}", lang.link);
    language = jQuery(language);
    jQuery("#languages").append(language);
  }

}
body { text-align: left !important}

#answer-list {
  padding: 10px;
  width: 290px;
  float: left;
}

#language-list {
  padding: 10px;
  width: 290px;
  float: left;
}

table thead {
  font-weight: bold;
}

table td {
  padding: 5px;
}
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="//cdn.sstatic.net/codegolf/all.css?v=83c949450c8b">
<div id="answer-list">
  <h2>Leaderboard</h2>
  <table class="answer-list">
    <thead>
      <tr><td></td><td>Author</td><td>Language</td><td>Size</td></tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody id="answers">

    </tbody>
  </table>
</div>
<div id="language-list">
  <h2>Winners by Language</h2>
  <table class="language-list">
    <thead>
      <tr><td>Language</td><td>User</td><td>Score</td></tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody id="languages">

    </tbody>
  </table>
</div>
<table style="display: none">
  <tbody id="answer-template">
    <tr><td>{{PLACE}}</td><td>{{NAME}}</td><td>{{LANGUAGE}}</td><td>{{SIZE}}</td><td><a href="{{LINK}}">Link</a></td></tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
<table style="display: none">
  <tbody id="language-template">
    <tr><td>{{LANGUAGE}}</td><td>{{NAME}}</td><td>{{SIZE}}</td><td><a href="{{LINK}}">Link</a></td></tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

linuxrules94

Posted 2011-12-11T17:40:19.933

Reputation: 1

-1 boring. It's >./ and <./ in J – John Dvorak – 2013-09-14T14:17:29.370

1

Welcome to code-golf. Please specify on what kind of input it should run (see faq on how to ask questions here). You also have to decide on what you wan't: "simplest way", "code-golf" or "fastest-code"? I suspect they contradict each other.

– Howard – 2011-12-11T17:55:06.063

@Howard Thanks for telling me. See my post I revised it. – linuxrules94 – 2011-12-11T18:05:36.840

Your example has holes in it. If passed ( 100, 12 ) it will see 100 as min and 12 as max – Zaid – 2011-12-11T18:39:39.760

2Also, the definition of 'simplest' is highly subjective. – Zaid – 2011-12-11T18:42:13.330

@Zaid that's weird, I don't see why its doing it – linuxrules94 – 2011-12-11T18:44:53.180

@linuxrules94 : sort will sort ASCII-betically by default. That's why 100 comes before 12, since 0 lt 2 == 1

– Zaid – 2011-12-11T18:56:35.663

7-1 because of: 1) language-specific, 2) overly broad (min or max? strings? sweet and simple despite the code-golf tag?); 3) a bit misinformed (Perl has min and max) – J B – 2011-12-11T19:20:32.657

@Jb Oh it does never saw that, sorry – linuxrules94 – 2011-12-11T19:22:15.367

1-1 boring. In Golfscript it's $0= and $-1=. – Peter Taylor – 2011-12-11T23:00:56.707

2It's a one-liner in many languages - not challenging. Prepare your next question in the chat or on meta, where you get hints before going public. I vote to close. – user unknown – 2011-12-13T08:00:20.647

Answers

0

Perl, 28 char

This sub provides an array that contains the min in the first member and the max in the second member:

sub a{@_=sort@_;(shift,pop)}

Perl, 34 char (27 inside the sub)

According to comments, in fact the above doesn't work for array length less than 2, here a new attempt that works even for zero length array and array that contains only numerics:

sub a{@_&&(sort{$a<=>$b}@_)[0,-1]}

Toto

Posted 2011-12-11T17:40:19.933

Reputation: 909

whoa, its 28 char and does min and max and is easy to read? amazing! great job! – linuxrules94 – 2011-12-11T20:00:47.987

Are you sure that this works e.g. if you provide a single number (and not a list)? – Howard – 2011-12-11T21:20:45.033

Make it shorter and handle the degenerate case: replace (shift,pop) with a slice: @_[0,-1] – J B – 2011-12-11T21:58:12.527

1And then get rid of temporaries: sub a{(sort@_)[0,-1]} is 21 characters long. – J B – 2011-12-11T22:00:24.470

I like this one because you used a language not dedicated to code golf – linuxrules94 – 2011-12-11T23:42:56.200

Doesn't work. It thinks ten is smaller than two. – ikegami – 2011-12-12T00:07:22.620

This answer appears to have the same problem as the example in the question. sort sorts ASCII-betically (to use Zaid's terminology). Even though 10 > 2, the first character 1 is less than 2, so 10 get sorted as the smallest number. – PhiNotPi – 2011-12-12T01:55:41.530

1

If all numbers are non-negative, this works:

sub max{\@s[@_];$#s}

Grimmy

Posted 2011-12-11T17:40:19.933

Reputation: 12 521

a.k.a. Thelen's Device. I prefer to write it as \@_[@_];$#_, but only because it's more obscure that way. – primo – 2013-09-18T11:17:37.560

1

Japt -g, 1 byte Min

n

Try it online!

Japt -g, 2 bytes Max

n<

Try it online!

Total: 3 bytes

Luis felipe De jesus Munoz

Posted 2011-12-11T17:40:19.933

Reputation: 9 639

1

Both programs pretty much just evaluate the input & sort it. Min takes the first item of the sorted list, and Max takes the last item of the sorted list.

GolfScript, 4 bytes Min

~$0=

Try it online!

GolfScript, 5 bytes Max

~$-1=

Try it online!

Total: 9 bytes

user85052

Posted 2011-12-11T17:40:19.933

Reputation:

1

Perl does have min and max subs.

use List::Util qw( min max );
my $min = min @values;
my $max = max @values;

A common module has a minmax function which finds both at once faster than they can be found individually (which is far more important than compactness of code).

use List::MoreUtils qw( minmax );
my ($min, $max) = minmax @values;

ikegami

Posted 2011-12-11T17:40:19.933

Reputation: 193

I only did this as a contest you don't need to use perl but anyway I decided to end it – linuxrules94 – 2011-12-12T23:30:01.467

1

If it doesn't have to be Perl and you just want the simplicity of Scheme instead of just shaving off characters (I don't care about long variable names (symbols in Scheme)), here's my Scheme for this (pun intended):

Of course we could cheat and use the fonctions (min a b c d ...) and (max a b c ...).

Don't mind the long variable names, they were chosen to be descriptive:

(define (min . args) (extremum < args))
(define (max . args) (extremum > args))

(define-syntax extremum
  (syntax-rules ()
    [(_ op . args)
     (if (null? args)
         (error "Read The Fucking Code!")
         (reduce (lambda (a b) (if (op a b) a b))
           (car rest) (cdr rest)))]
    [else (error "Read The Fucking Code!")]))

But if you want less code (fold is sort of like reduce):

(define (min . args) (e < args)) (define (max . args) (e > args))
(define-syntax e
  (syntax-rules ()
    [(_ o . r) (fold (lambda (a b) (if (o a b) a b)) (car r) (cdr r))]))

Samuel Duclos

Posted 2011-12-11T17:40:19.933

Reputation: 136

0

I don't think Perl is very golfy for such a problem.

Here are two alternatives for numerical lists only:

20 chars (inside sub)

sub min{(sort{$a<=>$b}@_)[0]}
sub max{(sort{$b<=>$a}@_)[0]}

30 chars (inside sub)

sub min{$r=pop;$r=$_<$r?$_:$r for@_;$r}
sub max{$r=pop;$r=$_>$r?$_:$r for@_;$r}

Zaid

Posted 2011-12-11T17:40:19.933

Reputation: 1 015

Wow amazing only 20 characters! "the greatest thing since sliced bread!" as they would say – linuxrules94 – 2011-12-11T19:14:02.043

or the greatest thing since [soda] pop (pun intended) – linuxrules94 – 2011-12-11T19:15:05.583

you may rename the subs to n & x or mx & mn – linuxrules94 – 2011-12-11T19:42:14.343

or use a different language – linuxrules94 – 2011-12-11T19:43:47.960

Asked: 2011-12-11T17:40:19.933

Viewed: 907 times

Active: 2020-01-22T18:48:59.663