Should I throw an exception or return -1?
Follow the problem constraints. In competitive programming, return -1. In real-world software, throwing an exception (like IllegalArgumentException) is usually safer.
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More FAQs in Edge Cases: Arrays with Less Than Two Elements
It cannot have a second largest element. Attempting to process it without checks will either return a default dummy value or crash the program.
A Guard Clause is a check at the very beginning of a function that validates inputs and returns immediately if the inputs are invalid or too small.
In languages like Java or C#, passing a null array to a function and calling array.length will cause a NullPointerException crash.
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