Find Smallest element in an array using Python

October 6, 2022

Find smallest element in an array using Python


In this section we will learn how to find smallest element in an array using python programming language which is the scripting language. If we want to find smallest element from the array enter by the user so we have to compare one element to other until we get the desired element and print it.

Program to find Smallest element in an array using Python

To find the minimum element in the given list or array we can use different approaches to get the minimum element. Here, in this page we will discuss the following algorithms to find the minimum/smallest element.

  • Method 1 : Using Iteration
  • Method 2 : Using sorting
  • Method 3 : Using min() function

Method 1 :

  • Take a variable say mini to store the minimum element of the array.
  • Set mini = arr[0]
  • Run a loop over the array
  • Check if(arr[i]<mini) then set mini = arr[i]
  • After complete iteration print mini.

Method 1 : Python code

Run 
arr = [10, 89, 9, 56, 4, 80, 8]
mini = arr[0]

for i in range(len(arr)):
  if arr[i] < mini:
     mini = arr[i]

print (mini)

Output :

4
 
 

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Method 2 :

  • Sort the array using sort() function.
  • Print the first element of the array.
Smallest element using python

Method 2 : Python Code :

Run 
arr = [10, 89, 9, 56, 4, 80, 8]
arr.sort()

print (arr[0])

Output :

4

Method 3 :

Using min() inbuilt function.

  • Declare an array.
  • Print the min(arr)

Output :

4

Method 3 : Python code

Run 
arr = [10, 89, 9, 56, 4, 80, 8]
print (min(arr))

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2 comments on “Find Smallest element in an array using Python”


  • Anuradha

    here, arr=[] means list not an array. In python we need to import array module to use array.


  • Arun

    from array import *
    a=array(“i”,[])
    b=int(input(“enter size :”))
    for x in range(b):
    c=int(input())
    a.append(c)
    print(min(a))