If it's impractical to keep track of all the possible ways elements may be incremented (which may be indicative of a design flaw), perhaps tieing it to a class that keeps track of updates behind the scenes through an accumulator would work for (or rescue) you. By taking this approach, and keeping track of updates as they happen, you trade O(n) tests for O(1) tests. The tradeoff is that a tied array itself carries with it more computational overhead than a simple array.
The class would need one accessor for the minimum value, so when your array is tied you would need to keep a copy of the object reference so that $o->get_min(); would work.
Be aware that you will have to guard against The untie Gotcha if you are using both the tied variable's primary interface (the array) and its object interface( $o->whatever() ).
Dave
In reply to Re: Tracking minimum of values in an array over time
by davido
in thread Tracking minimum of values in an array over time
by tj_thompson
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