Using std max element on a vector double

Question

I m trying to use std  min element and std  max element to return the min and max elements in a vector of doubles   My compiler doesn t like how I m currently trying to use them  and I don t understand the error message   I could of course write my own procedure to find the min max  but I d like to understand how to use the functions    include  lt vector gt   include  lt algorithm gt   using namespace std   int main int argc  char   argv         double cLower  cUpper      vector lt double gt  C          code to insert values in C not shown here      cLower   min element C begin    C end         cUpper   max element C begin    C end          return 0      Here is the compiler error      MIXD cpp 84  error  cannot convert    gnu cxx    normal iterator lt double   std  vector lt double  std  allocator lt double gt   gt   gt   to  double  in assignment    MIXD cpp 85  error  cannot convert    gnu cxx    normal iterator lt double   std  vector lt double  std  allocator lt double gt   gt   gt   to  double  in assignment   Would someone please explain what I m doing wrong

User · Answer

min max element return the iterator to the min max element  not the value of the min max element  You have to dereference the iterator in order to get the value out and assign it to a double  That is   cLower    min element C begin    C end

User · Answer

As others have said  std  max element   and std  min element   return iterators  which need to be dereferenced to obtain the value   The advantage of returning an iterator  rather than just the value  is that it allows you to determine the position of the  first  element in the container with the maximum  or minimum  value    For example  using C  11 for brevity     include  lt vector gt   include  lt algorithm gt   include  lt iostream gt   int main         std  vector lt double gt  v  1 0  2 0  3 0  4 0  5 0  1 0  2 0  3 0  4 0  5 0        auto biggest   std  max element std  begin v   std  end v        std  cout  lt  lt   Max element is    lt  lt   biggest          lt  lt    at position    lt  lt  std  distance std  begin v   biggest   lt  lt  std  endl       auto smallest   std  min element std  begin v   std  end v        std  cout  lt  lt   min element is    lt  lt   smallest          lt  lt    at position    lt  lt  std  distance std  begin v   smallest   lt  lt  std  endl      This yields   Max element is 5 at position 4 min element is 1 at position 0     Note   Using std  minmax element   as suggested in the comments above may be faster for large data sets  but may give slightly different results  The values for my example above would be the same  but the position of the  max  element would be 9 since        If several elements are equivalent to the largest element  the iterator to the last such element is returned

User · Answer

min element and max element return iterators  not values  So you need  min element    and  max element

[c++] Using std::max_element on a vector<double>

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