Here’s my rough solution, which passes for all three tests in the IDE. When submitting for validation it fails in every test, suggesting that this puzzle’s lua validation is currently broken.
N = tonumber(io.read()) -- the number of temperatures to analyse
if N == 0 then print("0")
else
TEMPS = io.read() -- the N temperatures expressed as integers ranging from -273 to 5526
-- Write an action using print()
-- To debug: io.stderr:write("Debug message\n")
LOWESTPOS = 5526
LOWESTNEG = -273
TEMPTABLE = {}
for i in string.gmatch(TEMPS, "%S+") do
table.insert(TEMPTABLE, tonumber(i))
end
for k,v in pairs(TEMPTABLE) do
if v > 0 and v < LOWESTPOS then LOWESTPOS = v
elseif v < 0 and v > LOWESTNEG then LOWESTNEG = v
elseif v == 0 then LOWESTPOS = 0
end
end
if LOWESTPOS <= (0 - LOWESTNEG) then print(tostring(LOWESTPOS))
else print(tostring(LOWESTNEG))
end
end