Getting the lowest value of a List

Question

I've got a struct which contains a few int and bool members, and I'm looking to obtain the lowest value from the list (actually making an A* Search based Path Finder).

Basically, my object looks like this:

    public struct Tile
    {
        public int id;
        public int x;
        public int y;
        public int cost;
        public bool walkable;
        public int distanceLeft;
        public int parentid;
    }

And I want to get the item with the lowest distanceLeft. The list is declared like so:

        List<Structs.Tile> openList = new List<Structs.Tile>();

And values are assigned in this manner:

        while (pathFound == null)
        {
            foreach (Structs.Tile tile in map)
            {
                foreach (Structs.Tile tile1 in getSurroundingTiles(Current))
                {
                    if (tile1.x == tile.x && tile1.y == tile.y)
                    {
                        Structs.Tile curTile = tile1;
                        curTile.parentid = Current.id;
                        curTile.distanceLeft = (Math.Abs(tile.x - goalx) + Math.Abs(tile.y - goaly));
                        if (curTile.distanceLeft == 0)
                        {
                            pathFound = true;
                        }
                        openList.Add(curTile);
                    }
                }
            }
            foreach (Structs.Tile tile in openList)
            {

            }
        }

If I had to guess I'd say this is either very difficult or far more complex than I'm making it sound, or incredibly easy and I'm just confused.

I did think about scrolling through the list and comparing each item to its lower counterpart, but that seems unreasonable considering the age we're in, it just seems there would be a simpler way. I don't care for the order of the list, as I am assigning each item an index from which I can call it.

Thanks in advance!

Why do you use a struct? It does consume about 28 bytes which is much bigger than the pointer size of 4/8 bytes. Every method which does consume your struct needs to carry 28 bytes. If it would be class the comparison would be much faster. — Alois Kraus, Feb 19 '13 at 21:30
It probably is a duplicate mbeckish, but I don't know Linq well enough to know that this is a Linq function, so my sincere apologies for this. I'd still like to retain this thread for a while though, as it does contain a response which I think could be useful to some people (others who may not know of Linq or the association referenced here). — XtrmJosh, Feb 19 '13 at 21:34
Alois Kraus - I am not entirely aware of the pros and cons behind using a class, though I would've thought that declaring a new instance of a class would be more of a job than a new instance of a struct? If not, let me know and I'll remember this for future reference. Thanks massively for your advise, I appreciate it a lot! — XtrmJosh, Feb 19 '13 at 21:35
There is a little article explaining this stuff: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc301569.aspx — Alois Kraus, Feb 19 '13 at 21:59

score 5 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

5

The other answers explain how to do this with LINQ - however, they are all O(n) or slower. Using one of those methods will significantly slow down your pathfinding algorithm.

Instead, you should be using a proper data structure. Rather than a list, you should be storing your nodes in a Priority Queue to get (and remove) the minimum in O(log n).

See this question for a list of priority queues in .Net.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

Community

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answered Feb 19 '13 at 21:40

BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft

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That rather depends on how you normally use the collection. If you want to index into it, a priority queue is going to be a rather poor choice of data structure. – Jim Mischel Feb 19 '13 at 21:58
1

@Jim: He stated in the question he wants to use it for [A\*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A*_search_algorithm#Description) – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Feb 19 '13 at 22:12
Ahhh ... missed that. Then a priority queue is definitely the way to go. – Jim Mischel Feb 19 '13 at 22:17

Daniel A.A. Pelsmaeker · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-19T21:32:08.377

There is not one LINQ extension method that returns the object with a minimum value, but you can write one yourself. The following class does what you want on any non-empty enumerable:

public static class MyExtensions
{
    public static TSource MinOf<TSource>(
        this IEnumerable<TSource> source,
        Func<TSource, int> selector)
    {
        // Get the enumerator.
        var enumerator = source.GetEnumerator();
        if (!enumerator.MoveNext())
            throw new InvalidOperationException("The source sequence is empty.");

        // Take the first value as a minimum.
        int minimum = selector(enumerator.Current);
        TSource current = enumerator.Current;

        // Go through all other values...
        while (enumerator.MoveNext())
        {
            int value = selector(enumerator.Current);
            if (value < minimum)
            {
                // A new minimum was found. Store it.
                minimum = value;
                current = enumerator.Current;
            }
        }

        // Return the minimum value.
        return current;
    }
}

Put it in a file in your project and call it like this:

openList.MinOf(tile => tile.distanceLeft);

This is more efficient than ordering the entire sequence (using OrderBy) and then taking the first value (using First).

Thanks, will this method return the object itself though, or just the int which is stored in the object? I assume by looking at it, the object? — XtrmJosh, Feb 19 '13 at 21:29
No it returned the int. I updated the answer with something that will return the object. — Daniel A.A. Pelsmaeker, Feb 19 '13 at 21:32
Thanks, this looks really complex but I'll take a while to understand it. It seems this is the "correct" way to proceed, so thanks a lot dude! — XtrmJosh, Feb 19 '13 at 21:37

nick_w · Answer 3 · 2013-02-19T21:38:35.933

1

To get the Tile with the lowest distanceLeft, try this:

Tile tile = openList.OrderByAscending(t => t.distanceLeft).First();

Edit:

Doing this will return an IEnumerable<Tile> which will be sorted in ascending order - openList itself will not be modified.

edited Feb 19 '13 at 21:38

answered Feb 19 '13 at 21:33

nick_w

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Will this modify the order of the list? If so, I think the Linq option may be favourable, I know I mentioned that I don't mind modifying the order, but I'd rather not for the sake of resources and what not, it seems it may be somewhat wasteful to do this. I greatly appreciate your response, nonetheless. Thanks! – XtrmJosh Feb 19 '13 at 21:36
@XtrmJosh See my edit. – nick_w Feb 19 '13 at 21:38
It does not modify the input list. Instead it creates some memory structure that sorts the entire list which is then all discarded except for the first element. – Daniel A.A. Pelsmaeker Feb 19 '13 at 21:42
It does seem more memory intensive than the alternative method here, but as I said I appreciate the input, thanks! – XtrmJosh Feb 20 '13 at 07:25

Jim Mischel · Answer 4 · 2013-02-19T21:53:46.150

1

Or, if for some reason you can't use LINQ:

int lowest = 0;
for (int i = 1; i < openList.Count; ++i)
{
    if (openList[i].distanceLeft < openList[lowest].distanceLeft)
    {
        lowest = i;
    }
}
// lowest contains the index of the item with the lowest 'distanceLeft' value.
// You can return the item itself by indexing into the list.
var lowestItem = openList[lowest];

edited Feb 19 '13 at 21:53

answered Feb 19 '13 at 21:40

Jim Mischel

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This returns the minimum value, not the object with the minimum value – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Feb 19 '13 at 21:41
Just to give a bit more clarification as to why you can't use Min() in this situation: `Min()` returns the object, but compares the objects itself (you can't specify a selector). `Min(lambda)` returns the datatype that the lambda selects, which in this case is an int. – gunr2171 Feb 19 '13 at 21:54
Actually, it was returning the index of the item with the minimum value. Now it returns the item itself. – Jim Mischel Feb 19 '13 at 21:55
@gunr2171: Yeah, saw that. My bad. It's odd that the interface is written that way. – Jim Mischel Feb 19 '13 at 21:56

Getting the lowest value of a List

4 Answers4