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Programming-Idioms

  • Dart
  • Java

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.

import static java.util.Arrays.binarySearch;
int i = binarySearch(a, x);
import java.util.arrays;
static int binarySearch(final int[] arr, final int key) {
    final int index = Arrays.binarySearch(arr, key);
    return index < 0 ? - 1 : index;
}
import 'package:collection/collection.dart';
a.binarySearch(x);

this function is already part of the library.
#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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