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BJP3 Exercise 7.2: range

Language/Type: Java arrays
Author: Lisa Fiedler (on 2013/04/01)

Write a static method named range that takes an array of integers as a parameter and returns the range of values contained in the array. The range of an array is defined to be one more than the difference between its largest and smallest element. For example, if the largest element in the array is 15 and the smallest is 4, the range is 12. If the largest and smallest values are the same, the range is 1.

The following table shows some calls to your method and their results (the largest and smallest values are underlined):

Call Value Returned 
int[] a1 = {8, 3, 5, 7, 2, 4};

range(a1) returns  7

int[] a2 = {15, 22, 8, 19, 31};

range(a2) returns 24

int[] a3 = {3, 10000000, 5, -29, 4};

range(a3) returns 10000030

int[] a4 = {100, 5};

range(a4) returns 96

int[] a5 = {32};

range(a5) returns  1

You may assume that the array contains at least one element (that its length is at least 1). You should not make any assumptions about the values of the particular elements in the array; they could be extremely large, very small, etc. You should not modify the contents of the array.

Type your solution here:


This is a method problem. Write a Java method as described. Do not write a complete program or class; just the method(s) above.

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