The code in that hack that looks for the top poster is basically a simple algorithm that looks for the highest number in an array. A very trivial way to do this is to set a temp variable called max to 0 and then loop through the array element by element.
Each element in the array is compared with the value in max. If the element is greater than max, max is set to that new value and the testing continues.
If you want to find the biggest 3 elements in the array, you need three temp variables (max1, max2, and max3)
Again, you cycle through the array. First, you check to see if the element in the array is bigger than max3. If it is, you check to seee if it is bigger than max2. If it is, you check to see if it's bigger than max1. If it's bigger than max1, you set max1 to that value.
If it's not bigger than max1, but is bigger than max2, you set max2 to the new value. (This is now the second highest element)
If it's bigger than max3 but not bigger than max2, you update max3 and you have the third highest element.
So, basically, you are looking at some nested loops.
Once you have the three highest numbers, you just use those values to calculate the 3 averages, and boom. You are done.
05-01-2003, 02:27 PM
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