Finding the Minimum in an Array

With a ten-element initializer list the buggy program will fail about one time in ten (assuming random lists of data.) It might not even be clear when it did fail, because the answer it computes is close to the maximum. With a ten thousand element array (not an uncommon length), the program will fail about one time in ten thousand! Off-by-one errors can be very subtle.

Here is a program that finds the minimum of an array. It is similar in basic style to the maximum-finding program:

class MinAlgorithm
{

  public static void main ( String[] args ) 
  {

    int[] array =  { -20, 19, 1, 5, -1, 27, 19, 5 } ;
    int   min;

    // initialize the current minimum
    min = ___________

    // scan the array
    for ( int index=0; index < array.length; index++ )
    { 
      _________________

        _________________

    }
      
    System.out.println("The minimum of this array is: " + min );
  }
}