K’th Smallest/Largest Element in Unsorted Array in C++

In this tutorial, we are going to write a program that finds the k-th smallest number in the unsorted array.

Let's see the steps to solve the problem.

• Initialise the array and k.
• Sort the array using sort method.
• Return the value from the array with the index k - 1.

Example

Let's see the code.

 Live Demo

#include <bits/stdc++.h>
using namespace std;
int findKthSmallestNumber(int arr[], int n, int k) {
   sort(arr, arr + n);
   return arr[k - 1];
}
int main() {
   int arr[] = { 45, 32, 22, 23, 12 }, n = 5, k = 3;
   cout << findKthSmallestNumber(arr, n, k) << endl;
   return 0;
}

Output

If you run the above code, then you will get the following result.

23

Conclusion

If you have any queries in the tutorial, mention them in the comment section.