how could you adapt it to calculate second and third highest numbers?

something like:
use strict;

my @array = (1, 5, 4, 10, 20, 2, 1, 3, 7);
my @hi = (0) x 3;                # '0' assumes positive #'s

foreach (@array) {
   $_ <= $hi[0] and next;
   @hi = (sort $a<=>$b, @hi, $_)[-3..-1];
}

print "@hi";

[download]
(untested)   (and, as said, of course the sort method would be better, at least for small arrays, and would be even more better for finding the top three values:  (sort ..., @array)[-3..-1] )

  p

In reply to Re: Re: Re: finding highest number by petral
in thread finding highest number by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.