C Program to Find the Second Smallest Element in an Array

Write a C program to find the second smallest element in an array using for loop. In this example, the if statement checks whether items are smaller than the smallest variable and stores the second smallest array element.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <limits.h>
 
int main()
{
	int i, Size;
	int smallest, secSmallest;
	
	printf("\nEnter Second Smallest Number Array Size = ");
	scanf("%d", &Size);

	int arr[Size];
	
	printf("\nEnter %d elements of an Array = ", Size);
	for (i = 0; i < Size; i++)
	{
		scanf("%d", &arr[i]);
    }
	 
	smallest = secSmallest = INT_MAX;  
	   
	for (i = 0; i < Size; i++)
	{
		if(arr[i] < smallest)
		{
			secSmallest = smallest;
			smallest = arr[i];
		}
		else if(arr[i] < secSmallest && arr[i] != smallest)
		{
			secSmallest = arr[i];
		}	
	}
	printf("\nThe Smallest Number in this Array =  %d\n", smallest);
	printf("The second Small Number in this Array =  %d\n", secSmallest);
	
}

In this C program, we sorted the array in descending order, so the last but one element is the second smallest element.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <limits.h>
 
int main()
{
	int Size, i;
	
	printf("\nEnter Size = ");
	scanf("%d", &Size);
	
	int arr[Size];

	printf("\nEnter %d elements = ", Size);
	for (i = 0; i < Size; i++)
	{
		scanf("%d", &arr[i]);
    }
	   
	for (i = 0; i < Size; i++)
	{
		int temp;
		for(int j = i + 1; j < Size; j++)
		{
			if(arr[i] < arr[j])
			{
				temp = arr[i];
				arr[i] = arr[j];
				arr[j] = temp;
			}
		}
	}
	printf("\nThe Smallest Number =  %d\n", arr[Size - 1]);
	printf("The second Small Number =  %d\n", arr[Size - 2]);
	
}

Enter Size = 8

Enter 8 elements = 11 99 14 22 7 90 3 20

The Smallest Number =  3
The second Small Number =  7