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Program to find smallest array element in C
Finding smallest value in an array is a classic C array program. This program gives you an insight of iteration, array and conditional operators. We iteratively check each element of an array if it is the smallest. See the below program.
Algorithm
Let's first see what should be the step-by-step procedure of this program −
START Step 1 → Take an array A and define its values Step 2 → Declare smallest as integer Step 3 → Set smallest to 0 Step 4 → Loop for each value of A Step 5 → If A[n] < smallest, Assign A[n] to smallest Step 6 → After loop finishes, Display smallest as smallest element of array STOP
Pseudocode
Let's now see the pseudocode of this algorithm −
procedure smallest_array(A) Declare smallest as integer Set smallest to 0 FOR EACH value in A DO IF A[n] is less than smallest THEN smallest ← A[n] ENDIF END FOR Display smallest end procedure
Implementation
This pseudocode can now be implemented in the C program as follows −
#include <stdio.h> int main() { int array[10] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0}; int loop, smallest; smallest = array[0]; for(loop = 1; loop < 10; loop++) { if( smallest > array[loop] ) smallest = array[loop]; } printf("Smallest element of array is %d", smallest); return 0; }
The output should look like this −
Smallest element of array is 0
array_examples_in_c.htm
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