Sum of minimals

Sum of minimals coding problem

Have you worked before with two dimensional arrays? This will be small and simple programming exercise. Write a function, that takes an two dimensional array of integers and finds the minimum value in each row. And then returns the sum of all of the minimum values.

Example:
[1,2,3] //the lowest value is 1
[6,2,8] //2
[9,9,9] //and 9
So the function should return 12 //the sum of 1+2+9

Scroll down for the solution of this programming exercise for beginners

  public static int SumOfMinimums(int[,] num)
  {
//First lets get some variables (space in memory)
//GetLength(0) will give us the size of the first dimension
//GetLength(1) will give us the size of the second dimension
//GetLength(2) will give us the size of the …
//well we only have two dimensions right now

//Do you remember how to get the minimum number in an array ?
//If not try to make a program that does only that first.

            int a = num.GetLength(0); 
            int b = num.GetLength(1);
            int sum = 0;
            int min = num[0,0];

//we will go through every number in each row
//and find the minimum value
//then we will add it to "sum"

//we will use nested for loops. If you don't remember 
//how to use them, make a simple program that 
//use two nested for loops and examine the results for yourself

            for (int i = 0; i < a; i++)
            {
                min = num[i, 0];
                for (int j = 0; j < b; j++) 
                { 
                   if (num[i, j] < min) min = num[i, j]; 
                }
                sum += min;                
            }

//and return the sum when finished
            return sum;
  }