Developing a C Program to Find Smallest and Largest Integers, Positive and Negative Counts

In this article, we will explore how to develop a C program that can take an array of five integers as input and output the smallest and largest integers from the array. Additionally, the program will count and display the number of positive and negative integers in the array. This task can serve as a fundamental exercise in C programming for both beginners and those looking to enhance their skills.

Assumptions and Objective

For this example, we assume that you are familiar with basic C programming concepts, including arrays, loops, and mathematical functions. The objective is to create a simple yet efficient C program that can handle the specified tasks based on user input.

Step 1: Program Structure

We will start by setting up the basic structure of our C program. The main function will handle the logic for reading input, processing the data, and outputting the result.

#include stdio.h#include stdlib.hint main() {    int arr[5];    int smallest, largest, positive_count  0, negative_count  0;    printf("Enter five integers: ");    for (int i  0; i  largest) {            largest  arr[i];        }        if (arr[i] > 0) {            positive_count  ;        } else if (arr[i] 

Step 2: Input and Processing

The program begins by prompting the user to enter five integers. We use a for loop to read the integers into an array. We initialize the smallest and largest integers to the first element of the array and then iterate through the rest of the elements to find the smallest and largest values. We also maintain a count of positive and negative integers as we process each element.

Step 3: Output

After processing the input, we output the results: the smallest and largest integers, and the counts of positive and negative integers.

Optimization

While the above program works, it can be optimized using C features, such as the std::minmax_element function from the algorithm header. Here is an example of how you can achieve the same functionality using C :

#include iostream#include algorithm#include vector#include iteratorint main() {    int arr[5];    std::vector v(arr, arr   5);    std::cin  std::nelist(arr);    auto minmax  std::minmax_element((), v.end());    std::cout  "Smallest integer: "  *  std::endl;    std::cout  "Largest integer: "  *  std::endl;    int positive_count  std::count_if((), v.end(), [](int x) { return x > 0; });    int negative_count  std::count_if((), v.end(), [](int x) { return x 

Conclusion

This article provided a detailed guide on how to develop a C program to determine the smallest and largest integers in an array and count the positives and negatives. The use of C features like std::minmax_element and std::count_if can simplify the code, making it more concise and readable. Understanding such basic programming exercises can help in building a strong foundation in programming.