Skip to content

Add MaximumElement implementation with documentation #7318

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Open
AbhiramSakha wants to merge 2 commits into
base: master
Choose a base branch
from
+29 −0
Open

Add MaximumElement implementation with documentation #7318

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
2 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
159088d
feat: add MaximumElement implementation with documentation
AbhiramSakha Mar 17, 2026
4f4aa68
fix: align MaximumElement with project standards
AbhiramSakha Mar 17, 2026
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
29 changes: 29 additions & 0 deletions src/main/java/com/thealgorithms/arrays/MaximumElement.java
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
package com.thealgorithms.arrays;

/**
* Finds the maximum element in an array.
*/
public final class MaximumElement {

private MaximumElement() {
// utility class
}

/**
* Returns the maximum element in the array.
*
* @param arr input array
* @return maximum value
*/
public static int max(int[] arr) {
Copy link
Contributor

@singhc7 singhc7 Mar 20, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

While it is always great to see new contributions, there are a few critical edge cases and efficiency improvements needed here for a robust utility class:

  • The method does not validate against null inputs. Passing a null array will throw an unhandled NullPointerException when the enhanced for-loop attempts to execute.
  • If an empty array (new int[0]) is passed, the loop is bypassed entirely and the method returns Integer.MIN_VALUE. Since an empty set technically has no maximum element, returning an arbitrary extreme integer can cause silent downstream bugs. This should throw an IllegalArgumentException instead.
  • Initializing max to Integer.MIN_VALUE relies on a magic constant. A cleaner, more efficient algorithmic standard is to validate the array length, set max = arr[0], and iterate starting from the second element.

Copy link
Author

@AbhiramSakha AbhiramSakha Mar 20, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

While it is always great to see new contributions, there are a few critical edge cases and efficiency improvements needed here for a robust utility class:

  • The method does not validate against null inputs. Passing a null array will throw an unhandled NullPointerException when the enhanced for-loop attempts to execute.
  • If an empty array (new int[0]) is passed, the loop is bypassed entirely and the method returns Integer.MIN_VALUE. Since an empty set technically has no maximum element, returning an arbitrary extreme integer can cause silent downstream bugs. This should throw an IllegalArgumentException instead.
  • Initializing max to Integer.MIN_VALUE relies on a magic constant. A cleaner, more efficient algorithmic standard is to validate the array length, set max = arr[0], and iterate starting from the second element.

Update your code like this:

public static int max(int[] arr) {
if (arr == null) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Input array cannot be null");
}

if (arr.length == 0) {
    throw new IllegalArgumentException("Array must contain at least one element");
}

int max = arr[0];

for (int i = 1; i < arr.length; i++) {
    if (arr[i] > max) {
        max = arr[i];
    }
}

return max;

}

int max = Integer.MIN_VALUE;

for (int num : arr) {
if (num > max) {
max = num;
}
}

return max;
}
}
Loading