How to get the second highest number in an array in Visual C#?

Question

I have an array of ints. I want to get the second highest number in that array. Is there an easy way to do this?

Answer 1

You could sort the array and choose the item at the second index, but the following O(n) loop will be much faster.

int[] myArray = new int[] { 0, 1, 2, 3, 13, 8, 5 };
int largest = int.MinValue;
int second = int.MinValue;
foreach (int i in myArray)
{
    if (i > largest)
    {
        second = largest;
        largest = i;
    }
    else if (i > second)
        second = i;
}

System.Console.WriteLine(second);