Find the 2nd largest element in an array with minimum number of comparisons

Question

For an array of size N, what is the number of comparisons required?

Answer 1

Sorry, JS code...

Tested with the two inputs:

a = [55,11,66,77,72];
a = [ 0, 12, 13, 4, 5, 32, 8 ];

var first = Number.MIN_VALUE;
var second = Number.MIN_VALUE;
for (var i = -1, len = a.length; ++i < len;) {
    var dist = a[i];
    // get the largest 2
    if (dist > first) {
        second = first;
        first = dist;
    } else if (dist > second) { // && dist < first) { // this is actually not needed, I believe
        second = dist;
    }
}

console.log('largest, second largest',first,second);
largest, second largest 32 13

This should have a maximum of a.length*2 comparisons and only goes through the list once.