Find Largest And Smallest Number in a Linked List.

For a given linked list, you are supposed to write two separate functions that finds the largest and the smallest number in a linked list and print both the numbers.

Example 1:
Input: 4 6 2 8 1
Output: Largest Number: 8
Output: Smallest Number: 1

Example 2:
Input: 4 5 9 8 2
Output: Largest Number: 9
Output: Smallest Number: 2

Steps to find Largest number:

• Initialise an integer variable max to INT_MIN.

• Using temporary pointer temp start traversing the linked list and compare each data element in the linked list with the variable max until the end of linked list.

• If the current node’s data is greater than value of max, then store the value of the current node’s data into max.

• Finally, print the value of variable max which contains the largest number of the linked list.

Steps to find Smallest number:

• Initialise an integer variable min to INT_MAX.

• Using temporary pointer temp start traversing the linked list and compare each data element in the linked list with the variable min until the end of linked list.

• If the current node’s data is lesser than the value of min, then store the value of the current node’s data into min.

• Finally, print the value of variable min which contains the smallest number of the linked list.

Note : We are using INT_MAX because all the data elements are lesser than this and INT_MIN because all the data elements are greater than this. Using these two macros our findings become very easy.

C program that finds the largest and the smallest number in the linked list.

#include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <limits.h> struct node { int data; struct node * next; }; void displayLL(struct node * head) { struct node * temp; temp = head; temp=head; while(temp!=0) { printf("%d ",temp->data); temp = temp->next; } } void small(struct node *head) { struct node *temp = head; int min; min = INT_MAX; while(temp != NULL) { if(min > temp->data) { min = temp->data; } temp = temp->next; } printf("\n--------------------------------\n"); printf("Smallest number of linked list : %d", min); } void large(struct node *head) { struct node *temp = head; int max; max = INT_MIN; while(temp != NULL) { if(max < temp->data) { max = temp->data; } temp = temp->next; } printf("\n--------------------------------\n"); printf("Largest number of linked list : %d", max); } int main() { struct node *head = 0, *newnode, *temp; int n, choice, newdata; // Create Linked List // printf("Enter the number of nodes in the list : "); scanf("%d", &n); if(n == 0) { printf("--------------------------------\n"); printf("Linked list cannot be empty"); exit(0); } for(int i = 1; i<=n; i++) { newnode = (struct node *)malloc(sizeof(struct node)); printf("Enter the data%d : ", i); scanf("%d", &newnode->data); newnode->next = 0; if(head == 0) { head = temp = newnode; } else { temp->next = newnode; temp = newnode; } } printf("--------------------------------\n"); printf("Linked list : "); displayLL(head); small(head); large(head); }