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Programming-Idioms

  • Lisp
  • Js

Idiom #124 Binary search for a value in sorted array

Write the function binarySearch which returns the index of an element having the value x in the sorted array a, or -1 if no such element exists.

function binarySearch(a, x, i = 0) {
  if (a.length === 0) return -1
  const half = (a.length / 2) | 0
  return (a[half] === x) ?
    i + half :
    (a[half] > x) ?
    binarySearch(a.slice(0, half), x, i) :
    binarySearch(a.slice(half + 1), x, half + i + 1)
}

x | 0 removes the bit of x after the decimal.
This would be easier if JavaScript had more builtins for list processing.
#include <vector>
template<typename T>
int binarySearch(const std::vector<T> &a, const T &x)
{
    if(a.size() == 0) return -1;

    size_t lower = 0;
    size_t upper = a.size() - 1;

    while(lower <= upper)
    {
        auto mid = lower + (upper-lower) / 2;

        if(x == a[mid])
        {
            return (int)mid;
        }
        else if(x > a[mid])
        {
            lower = mid + 1;
        }
        else
        {
            upper = mid - 1;
        }
    }

    return -1;
}

Check for an empty vector up front, otherwise size() will return an unsigned 0, and subtracting 1 will be a big number!

New implementation...
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