Week 7

Searching

SEARCHING

• Searching refers to determining whether an element is present in a given list of elements or not.

• If the element is found to be present in the list then the search is considered as successful,
otherwise it is considered as an unsuccessful search.

• The search operation returns the location or address of the element found.

• There are various searching methods that can be employed to perform search on a data set.

• The choice of a particular searching method in a given situation depends on a number of factors,
such as:

• Order of elements in the list, i.e., random or sorted.

• Size of the list Let us explore the various searching methods one by one.

TYPES OF SEARCHING

• LINEAR SEARCHING

• BINARY SEARCHING

LINEAR SEARCH

• It is one of the conventional searching techniques that sequentially searches for an element in the
list.

• It typically starts with the first element in the list and moves towards the end in a step-by-step
fashion.

• In each iteration, it compares the element to be searched with the list element, and if there is a
match, the location of the list element is returned.

 Consider an array of integers A containing n elements.

• Let k be the value that needs to be searched.

• The linear search technique will first compare A[0] with k to find out if they are same.

• If the two values are found to be same then the index value, i.e., 0 will be returned as the location
containing k.

• However, if the two values are not same then k will be compared with A[1].

• This process will be repeated until the element is not found.

• Figure depicts the linear search technique performed on an array of integers.

• As shown in Fig., the value k is repeatedly compared with each element of the array A.

• As soon as the element is found, the corresponding index location is returned and the search
operation is terminated.

EFFICIENCY OF LINEAR SEARCH

• Assume that an array containing n elements is to be searched for the value k.

• In the best case, k would be the first element in the list, thus requiring only one comparison.

• In the worst case, it would be last element in the list, thus requiring n comparisons.

• To compute the efficiency of linear search we can add all the possible number of comparisons and

divide it by n.

• Thus, efficiency of linear search

= (1 + 2 + . . . + n) / n

= n(n + 1) / 2n

= O(n)

ADVANTAGES OF LINEAR SEARCH

• It does not require the list to be sorted in a particular order.

LIMITATIONS OF LINEAR SEARCH

• It is quite inefficient for large sized lists.

• It does not leverage the presence of any pre-existing sort order in a list.

BINARY SEARCH

• Binary search technique has a prerequisite – it requires the elements of a data structure (list) to be

already arranged in a sorted manner before search can be performed in it.

• It begins by comparing the element that is present at the middle of the list.

• If there is a match, then the search ends immediately and the location of the middle element is
returned.

• However, if there is a mismatch then it focuses the search either in the left or the right sub list

depending on whether the target element is lesser than or greater than middle element.

• The same methodology is repeatedly followed until the target element is found.

• Consider an array of integers A containing eight elements, as shown in Fig. Let k = 21 be the value

that needs to be searched.

• As we can see in Fig., the array A on which binary search is to be performed is already sorted.

• The following steps describe how binary search is performed on array A to search for value k:

• First of all, the middle element in the array A is identified, which is 18.

• Now, k is compared with 18. Since k is greater than 18, the search is focused on the right sub list.

• The middle element in the right sub list is 33. Since k is less than 33, the search is focused on the
left sub list, which is {21, 33}.

• Now, again k is compared with the middle element of {21, 33}, which is 21. Thus, it matches with K

• The index value of 21, i.e., 4 is returned and the search is considered as successful.
EFFICIENCY OF BINARY SEARCH

-BEST CASE

• The best case for a binary search algorithm occurs when the element to be searched is

present at the middle of the list.

• In this case, only one comparison is made to perform the search operation.

• Thus, efficiency = O(1)

-WORST CASE

• The worst case for a binary search algorithm occurs when the element to be

searched is not present in the list.

• Let n be the number of list elements and c be the total number of comparisons made in

the worst case.

• Now, after every single comparison, the number of list elements left to be searched is reduced by
2.

• Thus, c = logn

• Hence, efficiency = O(logn)

ADVANTAGES OF BINARY SEARCH

• It is a lot faster than linear search.

LIMITATIONS OF BINARY SEARCH

• Unlike linear search, it requires the list to be sorted before search can be performed.

• In comparison to linear search, the binary search technique may seem to be a little

difficult to implement.

MCQ

Given an array arr = {5,6,77,88,99} and key = 88; How many iterations are done until the element is
found?

Ans: 2

Given an array arr = {45,77,89,90,94,99,100} and key = 100;

What are the mid values (corresponding array elements) generated in the first and second iterations?

Ans: 90, 99, 100

Find Peak Element

• A peak element is an element that is strictly greater than its neighbours.

• Input: nums = [1,2,3,1]

• Output: 2

• Explanation: 3 is a peak element and your function should return the index number 2.