Find the largest and the smallest number in an array

Question

The Task

The task is very simple. Given an array containing only integers and strings, output the largest number and the smallest number.

Test Cases

Input: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]
Output: 1, 8

Input: [5, 4, 2, 9, 1, 10, 5]
Output: 1, 10

Input: [7, 8, 10, "Hello", 5, 5]
Output: 5, 10

Numbers in strings are not considered integers:

Input: [1, 2, 3, 4, "5"]
Output: 1, 4

If there is only one integer, it is both the largest and smallest integer:

Input: [1]
Output: 1, 1

Input: ["1", "2", "3", "4", 5]
Output: 5, 5

Rules

• You can assume that an array will always contains at least one integer.
• All integers are positive (greater than 0)
• The order of the output doesn't matter.
• This is code-golf, so the submission with the least amount of bytes wins!
• Strings can contain all printable ASCII characters (32 - 126) and are non-empty.

Answer 1

Seriously, 9 6 bytes

,ì;M@m

Try It Online

How it works

,                              Read list input
 ì                             Remove everything but numbers from it
  ;                            Make a copy
   m                           Extract its min value
    @M                         Extract the other one's max value
                               Implicit output (max then min)

Answer 2

JavaScript (ES6), 54 56

Edit 2 bytes saved thx @Neil

Note: x===+x is true if and only if x is a number

a=>[Math.max(...a=a.filter(x=>x===+x)),Math.min(...a)]

Answer 3

Pyth, 14 11 10 bytes

hM_BS^I#1Q

Try it online. Test suite.

Explanation

• Q: evaluated input
• #: filter that on:
  • I: the value being the same after:
    • ^…1 raising it to power 1
• S: sort that
• _B: create array [previous, reversed(previous)]
• hM: take first item of each item of that

The hardest part is to golf the removal of strings, which currently takes 4 bytes. The current approach works due to ^<str>1 taking the first Cartesian power of the sequence (basically, the list of the string's characters), but ^<int>1 is just the identity function.

Answer 4

Python 2, 42 bytes

In Python 2, integers are always less than strings during comparisons, so a simple min(s) will find the smallest integer. When finding the maximum though, we must filter out strings first. The anonymous function accepts a sequence and returns a tuple with the minimum and maximum.

lambda s:(min(s),max(x for x in s if''>x))

Example:

[1,'77', 6, '', 4] -> (1, 6)

Answer 5

Jelly, 8 bytes

|f¹Ṣ0,1ị

Try it online!

Background

In a perfect world, it would suffice to intersect the list with a flattened version of itself. Strings are simply lists of characters in Jelly, so while the original list would contain integers and strings, the flattened version would contain integers and characters, leaving only the integers in the intersection.

In the real world, both the parsers of both input and string literals yield characters instead of strings of length 1. The only way to pass a singleton string to a function would be to encode it "manually" as, e.g., [”a], which is a character wrapped in an array.

This would save a byte, for a total of 7 bytes (Try it online!).

fFṢ0,1ị

Since that's probably not acceptable, we also need a way to differentiate characters from integers.

Jelly's bitwise atoms desperately try to convert their arguments to integers. They start by vectorizing until they encounter types of depth 0 (numbers or characters), then attempt to convert them to integers. For a character that represents an integer, this will be successful. For others, a dyadic, bitwise atom will simply give up and return 0.

For example, bitwise ORing the list [1, "2", "34", "-5", "a", "bc"] with itself will yield

[1, 2, [3, 4], [0, 5], 0, [0, 0]]

By intersecting the result with the original list, we get rid of the arrays and the integers that weren't present in the original list.

How it works

|f¹Ṣ0,1ị  Main link. Input: A (list)

|         Bitwise OR the list A with itself.
 f¹       Filter the result by presence in A.
   Ṣ      Sort the resulting list of integers.
    0,1ị  Retrieve the elements at those indexes.
          Indices are 1-based and modular in Jelly, so 0 is the last (maximum),
          and 1 is the first (minimum).

Answer 6

Ruby, 57 36 29 bytes

Newbie here, so I don't know if there is any standard or universally accepted place/way to calculate bytes used, any help would be very appreciated!

Edited as per manatwork & Doorknob's comment!

->n{(n.map(&:to_i)&n).minmax}

Test

2.3.0 :076 > f=->n{[(n.map(&:to_i) & n).min, (n.map(&:to_i) & n).max]}
 => #<Proc:0x007ff7650ee868@(irb):76 (lambda)>
2.3.0 :077 > f[[7, 8, 10, "Hello", 5, 5]]
 => [5, 10]

Answer 7

Mathematica, 20 bytes

MinMax@*Select[#>0&]

---

Test cases

MinMax@*Select[#>0&]@{1,2,3,4,"5"}
(* {1,4} *)

Answer 8

CJam, 15 13 bytes

{_:z&$2*_,(%}

An unnamed block (function) which expects the input array on the stack and leaves the output array in its place.

Run all test cases.

Explanation

_     e# Duplicate.
:z    e# Map over list: a) take abs() of integer elements (a no-op) or b) wrap strings
      e# in an array.
&     e# Set intersection: only the integers will appear in both arrays.
$     e# Sort.
2*    e# Repeat array twice (to make the code work with single-integer input).
_,    e# Duplicate, get length N.
(%    e# Decrement, get every (N-1)th element, i.e. the first and the last.

Answer 9

jq, 21 characters

[.[]|numbers]|min,max

Sample run:

bash-4.3$ bin/jq '[.[]|numbers]|min,max' <<< '[7, 8, 10, "Hello", 5, 5]'
5
10

On-line test:

• [7, 8, 10, "Hello", 5, 5]
• ["1", "2", "3", "4", 5]

Answer 10

Haskell, 41 39 bytes

f x=[minimum,maximum]<*>[[i|Left i<-x]]

In Haskell all elements of a list have to be of the same type, so I cannot mix Integer and String. However, there's the Either type for combining two types into a single one. The input list is therefore of type Either Integer String¹. f filters the Integers, removes the Either wrapper, puts the list as the single element in a new list (e.g. [[1,2,3]]), so that <*> can apply the functions given in the first argument to it.

Usage example: f [Left 1, Left 3, Right "Hello", Left 2] -> [1,3].

Edit: @xnor brought <*> into play and saved 2 bytes. Thanks!

---

¹ actually it's fully polymorphic in the second type as the String property is never used.

Answer 11

Mathematica, 28 bytes

MinMax[#/._String->Nothing]&

Answer 12

PHP, 50 48 bytes

<?=min($a=array_filter($a,is_int)).', '.max($a);

Answer 13

Retina, 71

Thanks (as always) to @MartinBüttner for the golfing help.

Not competitive golf-wise, but its interesting to implement integer bubble sorting in Retina.

Assumes all strings in the input are " double-quoted and don't contain any escaped double quotes \".

A`"
¶

\d+
$&$*a $&$*a
+`\b(a+) +\1(a+)\b
$1$2 $1
 +[a ]+ +

(a)+
$#1

Input is newline-separated.

Try it online.

Answer 14

Mathematica, 14

#&@@@MinMax@#&

Example:

tests = {
   {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8},
   {5, 4, 2, 9, 1, 10, 5},
   {7, 8, 10, "Hello", 5, 5},
   {1, 2, 3, 4, "5"},
   {1},
   {"1", "2", "3", "4", 5}
 };

# & @@@ MinMax@# & /@ tests

{{1, 8}, {1, 10}, {5, 10}, {1, 4}, {1, 1}, {5, 5}}

Explanation:

When MinMax gets non-numeric input it reduces the problem as far as it can, then leaves terms wrapped in Min and Max:

MinMax @ {7, 8, 10, "Hello", 5, 5}

{Min[5, "Hello"], Max[10, "Hello"]}

Due to the automatic ordering that takes place strings follow integers.

Apply at levelspec {1}, shorthand @@@, is then used to pull the first argument of non-atomic elements. Note that 5 is untouched here:

foo @@@ {5, Max[10, "Hello"]}

{5, foo[10, "Hello"]}

Answer 15

MATL, 23 bytes

"@Y:tX%1)2\?x]N$htX<wX>

Try it online!

"       % implicitly input cell array. For loop that iterates on each cell
  @     %   push each cell
  Y:    %   cell's contents (either a number or a string)
  tX%   %   duplicate and push class. This will produce 'char'  or 'double'
  1)    %   get first letter: either 'c' or 'd'
  2\    %   is its ASCII code odd?
  ?     %   if so...
    x   %     delete (it's a string)
  ]     %   end if
  N$h   %   concatenate all stack into an array. This array will contain up to
        %   three numbers: minimum up to now, maximum up to now, new value (if any)
  tX<   %   duplicate. Push minimum
  wX>   %   swap. Push maximum.
        % implicitly end for
        % implicitly display stack contents

Answer 16

Oracle SQL 11.2, 189 bytes

SELECT MIN(TO_NUMBER(i)),MAX(TO_NUMBER(i))FROM(SELECT REGEXP_SUBSTR(:1,'[^,]+',1,LEVEL)i FROM DUAL CONNECT BY LEVEL<REGEXP_COUNT(:1,',')+2)WHERE TRIM(TRANSLATE(i,' 0123456789',' '))IS NULL;

Un-golfed

SELECT MIN(TO_NUMBER(i)),MAX(TO_NUMBER(i)) 
FROM  (
        SELECT REGEXP_SUBSTR(:1,'[^,]+',1,LEVEL)i 
        FROM   DUAL 
        CONNECT BY LEVEL<REGEXP_COUNT(:1,',')+2
      )
WHERE TRIM(TRANSLATE(i,' 0123456789',' '))IS NULL;

The sub-query parse the array and split it to populate a view with one element per row. Then the non numeric elements are filtered out.

I wish I could have found a way to do it with LEAST and GREATEST, but no luck with how to handle the array as a parameter.

Answer 17

Perl 44 39 + 3 = 41 bytes

@a=sort{$a-$b}grep!/"/,@F;$_="@a[0,-1]"

Requires -pa flags:

$ perl -pae'@a=sort{$a-$b}grep!/"/,@F;$_="@a[0,-1]"' <<< '1 2 3 5 4'
1 5
$ perl -pae'@a=sort{$a-$b}grep!/"/,@F;$_="@a[0,-1]"' <<< '1 2 3 4 "5"'
1 4

Thanks to @manatwork for shaving off a few bytes

Answer 18

vimscript, 25 bytes

g/"/d
sort n
t.
t.
2,$-1d

Yep, that's right, vimscript.

Expects input in the form

1
2
3
4
"5"

And outputs in the form

1
4

Explanation:

g/"/d    delete all lines that contain quotes
sort n   sort numerically
t.       duplicate the first line
t.       duplicate it again
2,$-1d   delete from line 2 to line (END-1)

The first line needs to be duplicated twice to handle the edge case of an input of a single number. This is because the last command will complain if there are only two lines when it is reached, since it ends up being 2,1d which is a backwards range.

Answer 19

Bash, 40 31 30 bytes

sort -n|sed /\"/d|sed '1p;$p;d'

Requires a line separated list:

$ echo $'5\n4\n2\n9\n1\n"10"\n5' | sort -n|sed /\"/d|sed '1p;$p;d'
1
9

Thanks to @manatwork to shave off a few bytes

Answer 20

PowerShell, 53 36 bytes

@($args[0]|?{$_-is[int]}|sort)[0,-1]

_{Saved 17 bytes thanks to @goric}

OOOF ... PowerShell usually plays pretty fast and loose with casting, which is normally a good thing for golfing, but hurts it here.

Takes our input $args[0] and pipes it into a Where-Object statement (the ?) that will only select integers and passes them along the pipeline, discarding anything else. Since dynamic re-casting happens on-the-fly in the background for you (e.g., 1+"5" returning 6 is perfectly valid PowerShell), we need to use the -is operator in order to differentiate between the data types.

From there, we pipe that collection into Sort-Object, which will sort the integers from smallest to largest. The outer () is necessary so we can reference the first and last elements with [0,-1] (i.e., the smallest and the largest), but note we also need the outer @ to force casting the output of sort as an array if there's only one object (as the result of the ?, or only one object was input).

Answer 21

Julia, 35 bytes

x->extrema(filter(i->isa(i,Int),x))

This is a lambda function that accepts an array and returns a tuple of integers. To call it, assign it to a variable.

Julia has a built-in function extrema for getting the minimum and maximum elements of an array as a tuple. However, since the array can also have strings in it, we first have to filter those out. We can do that by testing whether each element is an integer using isa.

Answer 22

Japt, 23 bytes

[V=Uf_bZÃn@X-Y})g Vw g]

Test it online!

How it works

[V=Uf_  bZÃ n@  X-Y})g Vw g]
[V=UfZ{ZbZ} nXY{X-Y})g Vw g]

UfZ{ZbZ}   // Filter out the items Z in U where Z.b(Z) is falsy.
           // For numbers, this the original number, which is always non-0 (non-falsy).
           // For strings, this returns Z.indexOf(Z), which is always 0 (falsy).
nXY{X-Y}   // Sort by subtraction. Small items move to the front, large to the back.
V=         // Set variable V to the resulting array.
)g Vw g    // Take the first item in V, and the first in V.reverse().
[       ]  // Wrap them in an array so both are sent to output.

Answer 23

APL (Dyalog), 13 bytes

(⌊/,⌈/)⎕AV~⍨∊

Try it online!

∊ enlist (flatten – this makes all the strings into characters in the big list)

⎕AV~⍨ remove all characters in the Atomic Vector (the character set – leaves numbers)

(…) apply the following tacit function:

 ⌊/ the minimum across

 , appended to

 ⌈/ the maximus across

Answer 24

JavaScript (ES5), 105 bytes

function a(b){m=Math;b=b.filter(function(c){return c===+c});alert(m.min.apply(m,b)+','+m.max.apply(m,b))}

Usage: a([1,2,3,'4'])

Just trying :)

"Ungolfed":

function a(b){
  m=Math;
  b=b.filter(function(c){
    return c===+c
  });
  alert(m.min.apply(m,b) + ',' + m.max.apply(m,b))
}

Answer 25

Pyth, 11 bytes

hJSf!>TkQeJ

Explanation:

   f    Q   - filter([V for T in >], Q)
    !>Tk    - not(T>"")
  S         - sorted(^)
hJ       eJ - print first and last element

Try it here!

Answer 26

Perl 6, 25 bytes

The obvious answer would be this WhateverCode lambda

*.grep(Int).minmax.bounds

---

If it has to be a full program

put get.words».&val.grep(Int).minmax.bounds

The input to this full program is a space separated list of values

---

Usage

# give it a lexical name
my &code = *.grep(Int).minmax.bounds;

say code [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8];  # (1 8)
say code [5, 4, 2, 9, 1, 10, 5];    # (1 10)
say code [7, 8, 10, "Hello", 5, 5]; # (5 10)
say code [1, 2, 3, 4, "5"];         # (1 4)
say code [1];                       # (1 1)
say code ["1", "2", "3", "4", 5];   # (5 5)

say code []; # (Inf -Inf)

Answer 27

, 16 chars / 20 bytes

[МƲ(ï⇔⒡≔=+$⸩,МƵï

Try it here (Firefox only).

Not bad, not bad...

Explanation

This outputs an array containing both the maximum and minimum. (ï⇔⒡≔=+$⸩, basically filters out all strings in the input, МƲ gets the maximum in the input, and МƵ gets the minimum.

Just a note: this is the first challenge where I get to use ⇔, which basically turns ï⇔ into ï=ï.

Answer 28

Python 3, 56 bytes

lambda x:[m(t for t in x if str(t)!=t)for m in(min,max)]

Try it online on Ideone.

Answer 29

Java (OpenJDK 8), 124 bytes

a->{int s[]={0,0},t;for(Object i:a)try{t=(int)i;s[0]=s[0]<1|t<s[0]?t:s[0];s[1]=s[1]<t?t:s[1];}catch(Exception e){}return s;}

Try it online!

Java 8 lambda function, takes array as input and gives out array {min, max}. Non competing, because the input has to be an integer array.

Fixed and -1 byte thanks to Kevin Cruijssen

Answer 30

Jolf, 20 bytes

I can probably golf this... I need to implement type-checking shorter solutions.

γ fxd='nF~tH0ͺZkγZKγ
 _fx                 filter the input
    d='nF~tH0        checking for number type
γ                    call that "γ"
             ͺ       pair
              ZkγZKγ  the min and max of the array

Answer 31

Python 3, 65 bytes

Here's the obligatory example of how Python 3 is worse (for golfing) than Python 2, because it got rid of weird behaviours, like "you can compare ints and strings, and all ints are less than all strings".

def m(a):b=sorted(n for n in a if type(n)==int);return b[0],b[-1]

Answer 32

C#, 71 bytes

(object[]z)=>{var a=z.OfType<int>();return new int[]{a.Max(),a.Min()};};

Simple lambda which returns the min and max as an int array.

Answer 33

PARI/GP, 52 bytes

This is terrible -- there has to be a better way to check if something is a number than type. polcoeff(eval(x),0) is even worse, despite (ab)using the requirement that numbers are positive. iferr(O(x);1,E,0) is clever but a byte longer: E is required for some reason, and p-adic numbers like O(3) are falsy (i.e., O(3)==0) so the ;1 is needed.

v->v=[x|x<-v,type(x)=="t_INT"];[vecmin(v),vecmax(v)]

An alternate approach is just as long:

v->[f([x|x<-v,type(x)=="t_INT"])|f<-[vecmin,vecmax]]

Answer 34

Hoon, 90 84 bytes

|*
*
=+
(sort (skip ((list @) +<) (curr test 0)) lte)
[(snag 0 -) (snag 0 (flop -))]

This uses a couple fun features of Hoon:

• I'm returning a wet gate instead of a dry one to prevent having to specify the type. This makes the caller typecheck the function instead of definition, which is perfectly fine.

• The function argument for |= is an unnamed arm, which is placed in the subject at +<. Specifying a/* and using a as the input is longer than just leaving it unnamed and using +< directly

• The same thing applies for =+ - it places the variable at the top of the subject at -, so I save the sorted list as an intermediate and can reference it the three times needed cheaply

• The input specifies "All integers are positive (greater than 0)", which along with the fact the string will never be empty helps immensely. I can then slam the input through the type verifier gate (list @), which converts all entries in the list that aren't a number into 0 and then get rid of all zeros.

Example of use:

> %.  (limo ~[1 2 "hello" 9 17])
      |*
      *
      =+
      (sort (skip ((list @) +<) (curr test 0)) lte)
      [(snag 0 -) (snag 0 (flop -))]
[1 17]