Finding Maximum or Minimum Values in Vectors in C

Getting the maximum or minimum value from a vector in C is a common programming task. Let's explore how to achieve this and address a specific error related to the max_element function.

Using max_element

The max_element function from the library returns an iterator pointing to the maximum value in the given range. To use it with a vector, follow these steps:

1. Create an iterator: vector::const_iterator it;
2. Find the maximum value: it = max_element(vector.begin(), vector.end());
3. Access the value: Use *it or it-> to access the maximum value.

Addressing the Error

The error you encountered is caused by trying to use the begin() method on an array. Arrays do not have a begin() or end() method like vectors. To work with arrays, you must use standard C-style indexing.

Example for Vectors

#include 
#include 

int main() {
    std::vector vector = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};
    int max_value = *std::max_element(vector.begin(), vector.end());
    std::cout 
Example for Arrays
#include 

int main() {
    std::array array = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};
    int max_value = 0;  // Initialize to minimum possible value
    for (int i = 0; i  max_value) { max_value = array[i]; }
    }
    std::cout