"Jonathan E. Paton" wrote:
> > > @data = (10,45,2,439);
> > > ($min,$max) = (sort {$a <=> $b} @data)[0,$#data];
> >
> > IMHO sorting a list to find the max and min
> > element is not a good idea. The sort is of
> > O(nlgn) and the usual run through the list
> > to find the max element is O(n).
>
> In general, it's not.
I am not sure what you mean by this, sorting is still O(nlgn) even
if it is implemented in machine code.
The point I was trying to make is, it is not intuitive to sort a
list to find the max and min element.
>
>
> > This is not of significance when n is small,
> > at the same time this is not a method that
> > should be followed for this task.
>
> Sort isn't implemented in perl's bytecode, but in
> machine code. Machine code runs a few times faster
> that your scripts can, hence for small datasets the
> sort is faster.
I remember it being mentioned in this list that perl's sort
implementation is a mixture of
merge and quick sort (I apologize if this is not true). Can you
point me to the file in which sort
has been implemented.
>
>
> However, you if you cared for speed you'd use the
> Math modules on CPAN for this... or Perl Data
> Language (PDL).
I guess the module you are mentioning here is List::Util. It also
uses a method similar to what you
have mentioned below.
>
>
> If you don't, and it's production code, then use:
>
> sub maxmin {
> my @array = @_;
> my ($max, $min) = @array[0, 0];
>
> foreach my $element (@array) {
> $max = $element
> if $element > $max;
> $min = $element
> if $element < $min;
> }
> return ($max, $min);
> }
>
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