Question

Right now I have

def min(array,starting,ending)
  minimum = starting
  for i in starting+1 ..ending
    if array[i]<array[minimum]
      minimum = i
    end    
  end

return minimum
end

Is there a better “implementation” in Ruby? This one still looks c-ish.
Thanks.

Answer 1

If you want to find the index of the minimal element, you can use Enumerable#enum_for to
get an array of items-index pairs, and find the minimum of those with Enumerable#min (which will also be the minimum of the original array).

% irb
irb> require 'enumerator'
#=> true
irb> array = %w{ the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog }
#=> ["the", "quick", "brown", "fox", "jumped", "over", "the", "lazy", "dog"]
irb> array.enum_for(:each_with_index).min
#=> ["brown", 2]

If you want to bound it to specific array indices:

irb> start = 3
#=> 3
irb> stop = 7
#=> 7
irb> array[start..stop].enum_for(:each_with_index).min
#=> ["fox", 0]
irb> array[start..stop].enum_for(:each_with_index).min.last + start
#=> 3