PHP program to find the minimum element in an array

To find the minimum element in an array in PHP, you can use a custom function or built−in functions. Here are different approaches to accomplish this task.

Using Custom Function

The manual approach involves iterating through the array and comparing each element ?

<?php
    function get_min_value($my_array){
        $n = count($my_array);
        $min_val = $my_array[0];
        for ($i = 1; $i < $n; $i++) {
            if ($min_val > $my_array[$i]) {
                $min_val = $my_array[$i];
            }
        }
        return $min_val;
    }
    
    $my_array = array(56, 78, 91, 44, 0, 11);
    echo "The lowest value of the array is " . get_min_value($my_array);
?>

The lowest value of the array is 0

Using min() Function

PHP provides a built−in min() function that directly returns the minimum value ?

<?php
    $my_array = array(56, 78, 91, 44, 0, 11);
    $min_value = min($my_array);
    echo "The minimum value is: " . $min_value;
?>

The minimum value is: 0

How It Works

The custom function get_min_value() works as follows:

• Initialization: The first element $my_array[0] is set as the initial minimum value
• Iteration: The loop starts from index 1 and compares each element with the current minimum
• Comparison: If a smaller element is found, it becomes the new minimum value
• Return: The function returns the final minimum value after checking all elements

Comparison

Conclusion

While the custom approach helps understand the logic, using PHP's built−in min() function is more efficient and cleaner for production code. Both methods have the same time complexity.