Find minimum values

[Al Hobbs]

Hi all,

I am trying to get the cleanest way to get the objects with the smallest values.

I know how to get just one :

list.OrderBy(d => d.size).FirstOrDefault();

But if there are multiple objects with the minimum size I want all of them.  
Right now I am planning on doing:

var min =  list.Min(d => size);
return list.Where(d => d.size =  min);

Is there another linq method that maybe I'm looking over?

If there is no better way in C# is there maybe a cleaner solution in Java streams?

Thanks!  

[Campbell Ritchie]

Don't know about Linq/C#, but this is the nearest I could think of in Java®:-

List<Integer> numbers =
      new Random().ints(100L, 1, 11)
                  .boxed()
                  .collect(Collectors.toList());
int min =
      numbers.stream()
             .min(Integer::compare)
             .orElse(Integer.MIN_VALUE); // predictable as 1
List<Integer> smallNumbers =
      numbers.stream()
             .filter(i -> i == min)
             .collect(Collectors.toList());

Maybe you could do it with one pass, but I think you would need an object to count the minimum value; remember local variables used in a λ must be effectively final.

[Stephan van Hulst]

You will want to perform a GroupBy. This is what it looks like:

var smallestElements = list.GroupBy(element => element.Size).OrderBy(group => group.Key).FirstOrDefault() ?? Enumerable.Empty<MyElementType>();

[Al Hobbs]

Stephan van Hulst wrote:You will want to perform a GroupBy.

Oh returning empty enumerable looks way better.  Nice!!!
I didn't understand it at first but it groups the objects by their value then takes the first one.  Very clean!!!
Thanks