Correct way to find max in an Array in Swift

Question

I\'ve so far got a simple (but potentially expensive) way:

var myMax = sort(myArray,>)[0]

And how I was taught to do it at school:

Answer 1

Updated for Swift 3/4:

Use below simple lines of code to find the max from array;

var num = [11, 2, 7, 5, 21]
var result = num.sorted(){
    $0 > $1
}
print("max from result: \(result[0])") // 21

Answer 2

You can use with reduce:

let randomNumbers = [4, 7, 1, 9, 6, 5, 6, 9]
let maxNumber = randomNumbers.reduce(randomNumbers[0]) { $0 > $1 ? $0 : $1 } //result is 9

Answer 3

var numbers = [1, 2, 7, 5];    
var val = sort(numbers){$0 > $1}[0];

Answer 4

In Swift 2.0, the minElement and maxElement become methods of SequenceType protocol, you should call them like:

let a = [1, 2, 3]
print(a.maxElement()) //3
print(a.minElement()) //1

Using maxElement as a function like maxElement(a) is unavailable now.

The syntax of Swift is in flux, so I can just confirm this in Xcode version7 beta6.

It may be modified in the future, so I suggest that you'd better check the doc before you use these methods.

Answer 5

Here's a performance test for the solutions posted here. https://github.com/tedgonzalez/MaxElementInCollectionPerformance

This is the fastest for Swift 5

array.max()

Answer 6

Given:

let numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Swift 3:

numbers.min() // equals 1
numbers.max() // equals 5

Swift 2:

numbers.minElement() // equals 1
numbers.maxElement() // equals 5