std::minmax_element

 

C++

Language

Standard library headers

Concepts

Utilities library

Strings library

Containers library

Algorithms library

Iterators library

Numerics library

Input/output library

Localizations library

Regular expressions library (C++11)

Atomic operations library (C++11)

Thread support library (C++11)

Technical Specifications

 

Algorithm library

Functions
Non-modifying sequence operations
all_ofany_ofnone_of (C++11)(C++11)(C++11) for_each countcount_if mismatch equal	findfind_iffind_if_not (C++11) find_end find_first_of adjacent_find search search_n
Modifying sequence operations
copycopy_if (C++11) copy_n (C++11) copy_backward move (C++11) move_backward (C++11) fill fill_n transform generate generate_n removeremove_if remove_copyremove_copy_if	replacereplace_if replace_copyreplace_copy_if swap swap_ranges iter_swap reverse reverse_copy rotate rotate_copy random_shuffleshuffle (until C++17)(C++11) unique unique_copy
Partitioning operations
is_partitioned (C++11) partition partition_copy (C++11)	stable_partition partition_point (C++11)
Sorting operations (on sorted ranges)
is_sorted (C++11) is_sorted_until (C++11) sort	partial_sort partial_sort_copy stable_sort nth_element
Binary search operations (on sorted ranges)
lower_bound upper_bound	binary_search equal_range
Set operations (on sorted ranges)
merge inplace_merge includes	set_difference set_intersection set_symmetric_difference set_union
Heap operations
is_heap (C++11) is_heap_until (C++11) make_heap	push_heap pop_heap sort_heap
Minimum/maximum operations
max max_element min min_element minmax (C++11) minmax_element (C++11)	lexicographical_compare is_permutation (C++11) next_permutation prev_permutation
Numeric operations
iota (C++11) accumulate inner_product	adjacent_difference partial_sum
C library
qsort	bsearch

 

Defined in header <algorithm>
	(1)
template< class ForwardIt > std::pair<ForwardIt,ForwardIt>     minmax_element( ForwardIt first, ForwardIt last );			(since C++11) (until C++17)
template< class ForwardIt > constexpr std::pair<ForwardIt,ForwardIt>     minmax_element( ForwardIt first, ForwardIt last );			(since C++17)
		(2)
template< class ForwardIt, class Compare > std::pair<ForwardIt,ForwardIt>     minmax_element( ForwardIt first, ForwardIt last, Compare comp );				(since C++11) (until C++17)
template< class ForwardIt, class Compare > constexpr std::pair<ForwardIt,ForwardIt>     minmax_element( ForwardIt first, ForwardIt last, Compare comp );				(since C++17)

Finds the greatest and the smallest element in the range [first, last). The first version uses operator< to compare the values, the second version uses the given comparison function comp.

Parameters

first, last	-	forward iterators defining the range to examine
cmp	-	comparison function object (i.e. an object that satisfies the requirements of Compare) which returns ​true if if *a is less than *b. The signature of the comparison function should be equivalent to the following:  bool cmp(const Type1 &a, const Type2 &b); The signature does not need to have const &, but the function object must not modify the objects passed to it. The types Type1 and Type2 must be such that an object of type ForwardIt can be dereferenced and then implicitly converted to both of them. ​
Type requirements
- ForwardIt must meet the requirements of ForwardIterator.

Return value

a pair consisting of an iterator to the smallest element as the first element and an iterator to the greatest element as the second. Returns std::make_pair(first, first) if the range is empty. If several elements are equivalent to the smallest element, the iterator to the first such element is returned. If several elements are equivalent to the largest element, the iterator to the last such element is returned.

Complexity

At most max(floor(3/2(N−1)), 0) applications of the predicate, where N = std::distance(first, last).

Notes

This algorithm is different from std::make_pair(std::min_element(), std::max_element()), not only in efficiency, but also in that this algorithm finds the last biggest element while std::max_element finds the first biggest element.

Possible implementation

First version
template<class ForwardIt> std::pair<ForwardIt, ForwardIt> minmax_element(ForwardIt first, ForwardIt last) { return std::minmax_element(first, last, std::less<>()); }
Second version
template<class ForwardIt, class Compare> std::pair<ForwardIt, ForwardIt> minmax_element(ForwardIt first, ForwardIt last, Compare comp) { std::pair<ForwardIt, ForwardIt> result(first, first);   if (first == last) return result; if (++first == last) return result;   if (comp(*first, *result.first)) { result.first = first; } else { result.second = first; } while (++first != last) { ForwardIt i = first; if (++first == last) { if (comp(*i, *result.first)) result.first = i; else if (!(comp(*i, *result.second))) result.second = i; break; } else { if (comp(*first, *i)) { if (comp(*first, *result.first)) result.first = first; if (!(comp(*i, *result.second))) result.second = i; } else { if (comp(*i, *result.first)) result.first = i; if (!(comp(*first, *result.second))) result.second = first; } } } return result; }

Example

Run this code

#include <algorithm>
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
 
int main()
{
    std::vector<int> v = { 3, 9, 1, 4, 2, 5, 9 };
 
    auto result = std::minmax_element(v.begin(), v.end());
    std::cout << "min element at: " << (result.first - v.begin()) << '\n';
    std::cout << "max element at: " << (result.second - v.begin()) << '\n';
}

Output:

min element at: 2
max element at: 6

See also

min_element	returns the smallest element in a range (function template)
max_element	returns the largest element in a range (function template)
std::experimental::parallel::minmax_element (parallelism TS)	parallelized version of std::minmax_element (function template)