Jon Resig illustrated in this article how this could be achieved by extending the Array prototype and invoking the underlying Math.min method which unfortunately doesn't take an array but a variable number of arguments:
Update: use Darin's / John Resig answer, just keep in mind that you dont need to specifiy thisArg for min, so Math.min.apply(null, arr) will work just fine.
or you can just sort the array and get value #1:
[2,6,7,4,1].sort()[0]
[!] But without supplying custom number sorting function, this will only work in one, very limited case: positive numbers less than 10. See how it would break:
var a = ['', -0.1, -2, -Infinity, Infinity, 0, 0.01, 2, 2.0, 2.01, 11, 1, 1e-10, NaN];
// correct:
a.sort( function (a,b) { return a === b ? 0 : a < b ? -1: 1} );
//Array [NaN, -Infinity, -2, -0.1, 0, "", 1e-10, 0.01, 1, 2, 2, 2.01, 11, Infinity]
// incorrect:
a.sort();
//Array ["", -0.1, -2, -Infinity, 0, 0.01, 1, 11, 1e-10, 2, 2, 2.01, Infinity, NaN]
And, also, array is changed in-place, which might not be what you want.
In this particular case it may be a bit verbose. reduce is particularly useful when you have a collection of complex data that you want to aggregate into a single value:
And of course you can always use classic iteration:
var arr,
i,
l,
min
arr = [14, 58, 20, 77, 66, 82, 42, 67, 42, 4]
min = Number.POSITIVE_INFINITY
for (i = 0, l = arr.length; i < l; i++) {
min = Math.min(min, arr[i])
}
console.log(min)
...but even classic iteration can get a modern makeover:
const arr = [14, 58, 20, 77, 66, 82, 42, 67, 42, 4]
let min = Number.POSITIVE_INFINITY
for (const value of arr) {
min = Math.min(min, value)
}
console.log(min)
I find this is a bit more useful than what's proposed above because what if you need the lowest 3 numbers as an example? You can also switch which order they're arranged, more info at http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_sort.asp
If you using D3.js, there is a handy function which does the same, but will ignore undefined values and also check the natural order:
d3.max(array[, accessor])
Returns the maximum value in the given array using natural order. If
the array is empty, returns undefined. An optional accessor function
may be specified, which is equivalent to calling array.map(accessor)
before computing the maximum value.
Unlike the built-in Math.max, this method ignores undefined values;
this is useful for ignoring missing data. In addition, elements are
compared using natural order rather than numeric order. For example,
the maximum of the strings [“20”, “3”] is “3”, while the maximum of
the numbers [20, 3] is 20.
And this is the source code for D3 v4:
export default function(values, valueof) {
var n = values.length,
i = -1,
value,
max;
if (valueof == null) {
while (++i < n) { // Find the first comparable value.
if ((value = values[i]) != null && value >= value) {
max = value;
while (++i < n) { // Compare the remaining values.
if ((value = values[i]) != null && value > max) {
max = value;
}
}
}
}
}
else {
while (++i < n) { // Find the first comparable value.
if ((value = valueof(values[i], i, values)) != null && value >= value) {
max = value;
while (++i < n) { // Compare the remaining values.
if ((value = valueof(values[i], i, values)) != null && value > max) {
max = value;
}
}
}
}
}
return max;
}
I think I have an easy-to-understand solution for this, using only the basics of javaScript.
function myFunction() {
var i = 0;
var smallestNumber = justPrices[0];
for(i = 0; i < justPrices.length; i++) {
if(justPrices[i] < smallestNumber) {
smallestNumber = justPrices[i];
}
}
return smallestNumber;
}
The variable smallestNumber is set to the first element of justPrices, and the for loop loops through the array (I'm just assuming that you know how a for loop works; if not, look it up). If an element of the array is smaller than the current smallestNumber (which at first is the first element), it will replace it's value. When the whole array has gone through the loop, smallestNumber will contain the smallest number in the array.
var array =[2,3,1,9,8];
var minvalue = array[0];
for (var i = 0; i < array.length; i++) {
if(array[i]<minvalue)
{
minvalue = array[i];
}
}
console.log(minvalue);
Here is code that will detect the lowest value in an array of numbers.
//function for finding smallest value in an array
function arrayMin(array){
var min = array[0];
for(var i = 0; i < array.length; i++){
if(min < array[i]){
min = min;
}else if (min > array[i]){
min = array[i + 1];
}else if (min == array[i]){
min = min;
}
}
return min;
};
call it in this way:
var fooArray = [1,10,5,2];
var foo = arrayMin(fooArray);
(Just change the second else if result from: min = min to min = array[i]
if you want numbers which reach the smallest value to replace the original number.)