Why max() and min() only accepts 2 arguments?

Question

I mean I just can't get it. What's up with this brilliant idea?

Comments

float max( float a, float b )
Return the maximum of two values.

What were you expecting?

Answer 1

It's not weird. Java and C# also use 2 arguments
you can write your own code that may use array as argument

Answer 2

Working with two floats is way faster than working with an array of objects. It's all about performance. But you can write an additional max and min function that accept arrays of untyped values if you want.

Answer 3

Let's say you want to clamp a value v to max constant 20. You could do it with code

if (v > 20):
  v = 20

But this is shorter and looks better in code:

v = max(v, 20.0)

You can use min max to clamp a value to the range (Godot has a clamp function, but still...)

v = max(0.0, min(20.0, v))

You can nest them, if you want to use more values

v = max(v1, max(v2, max(v3, v4)))

I personally use them a lot in my current Java project.

Comments

Am i wrong or is

if (v > 20):
  v = 20

as max(v,20) the opposite of what you want?
because if v was bigger than 20, the max() function would return the bigger value (v)? so you would get the desired functionality with the min() function rather than the max()

Answer 4

Like the people before me have said, it's a totally standard way of working.

If you only have a couple of variables to compare, you can nest the max() function calls, like Gladosik said.

If you have more variables, consider making them a list; sort them; and retrieve the first value to get the highest number.