PHP Math Exercises: Find earliest and latest dates from a list of dates

Last update on June 02 2025 13:01:21 (UTC/GMT +8 hours)

7. Find Earliest and Latest Dates

Write a PHP script to find earliest and latest dates from a list of dates.

Visual Presentation:

$PHP Math Exercises: Find earliest and latest dates from a list of dates$

Sample Solution:

PHP Code:

<?php
$dates = array('2015-02-01', '2015-02-02', '2015-02-03'); // Define an array of dates

// Print the latest date from the array
echo "Latest Date: " . max($dates) . "\n";

// Print the earliest date from the array
echo "Earliest Date: " . min($dates) . "\n";
?>

Output:

Latest Date: 2015-02-03                                     
Earliest Date: 2015-02-01

Explanation:

In the exercise above,

$dates = array('2015-02-01', '2015-02-02', '2015-02-03');: This line initializes an array '$dates' containing three date strings.
echo "Latest Date: " . max($dates) . "\n";: This line finds the maximum (latest) date from the array '$dates' using the "max()" function and then prints it along with the label "Latest Date".
echo "Earliest Date: " . min($dates) . "\n";: This line finds the minimum (earliest) date from the array '$dates' using the "min()" function and then prints it along with the label "Earliest Date".

Flowchart :

$Flowchart: Find earliest and latest dates from a list of dates$

For more Practice: Solve these Related Problems:

Write a PHP script to accept an array of date strings, sort them, and then output the earliest and latest dates using DateTime objects.
Write a PHP function that takes an array of dates, converts them to timestamps, and then finds and returns the minimum and maximum dates.
Write a PHP program to compare dates from an array and display the difference in days between the earliest and latest dates.
Write a PHP script to validate a list of date strings, remove invalid entries, and then determine the chronological bounds of the valid dates.

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