Task — Maximum gap

You are given an array of integers @N.

Write a script to display the maximum difference between two successive elements once the array is sorted.

If the array contains only 1 element then display 0.

Examples

Example 1
Input: @N = (2, 9, 3, 5)
Output: 4

Example 2
Input: @N = (1, 3, 8, 2, 0)
Output: 5

Example 3
Input: @N = (5)
Output: 0

Analysis

There may be a more elegant or concise solution, but nothing beats:

• Sort @N
• Loop over @N to find the smallest gap

for comprehensibility, not with the edge case of a single-member array also handled.

Try it 

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Blog: http://ccgi.campbellsmiths.force9.co.uk/challenge

use v5.26;    # The Weekly Challenge - 2021-03-29
use utf8;     # Week 106 - task 1 - Maximum gap
use warnings; # Peter Campbell Smith
binmode STDOUT, ':utf8';
use Encode;

maximum_gap(3);
maximum_gap(1, 2, 3, 4, 5);
maximum_gap(1, 16, 3, 15, 6, 10, 15);
maximum_gap(-7, -3, 1, 2, 3, 4);

sub maximum_gap {
    
    my (@n, $result, $gap, $j);
    
    # initialise
    @n = @_;
    say qq[\nInput:  (] . join(', ', @n) . ')';
    
    # find biggest gap
    $result = 0;
    if (@n > 1) {
        @n = sort {$a <=> $b} @n;
        for $j (1 .. $#n) {
            $gap = $n[$j] - $n[$j - 1];
            $result = $gap if $gap > $result;
        }
    }
    
    # report
    say qq[Output: $result];
}

11 lines of code

I completed this challenge after the closing date
and it has not been submitted to GitHub

Output

Input:  (3)
Output: 0

Input:  (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
Output: 1

Input:  (1, 16, 3, 15, 6, 10, 15)
Output: 5

Input:  (-7, -3, 1, 2, 3, 4)
Output: 4