Searching and Sorting
Learn about some of the most common searching and sorting algorithms!
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Key Concepts
Review core concepts you need to learn to master this subject
Linear search
Linear Search Complexity
Linear Search best case
Linear Search expressed as a Function
Return value of a linear search
Linear search as a part of complex searching problems
Modification of linear search function
Searching for smallest or largest value using linear search
Linear search
Linear search
Linear search sequentially checks each element of a given list for the target value until a match is found. If no match is found, a linear search would perform the search on all of the items in the list.
For instance, if there are n number of items in a list, and the target value resides in the n-5th position, a linear search will check n-5 items total.
- 1Imagine that you are a DJ at a party. The diagram on the right shows your playlist for the event. A party guest wants to know if “Uptown Funk” by Bruno Mars is a song on your playlist. You would …
- 2Linear search can be used to search for a desired value in a list. It achieves this by examining each of the elements and comparing it with the search element starting with the first element to the…
- 3Linear search is not considered the most efficient search algorithm, especially for lists of large magnitudes. However, linear search is a great choice if you expect to find the target value at the…
- 4There are two worst cases for linear search. Case 1: when the target value at the end of the list.
… - 5If this search was used 1000 times on 1000 different lists, some of them would be the best case, some the worst. For most searches, it would be somewhere in between. On average it would be in the…
- 6Linear search runs in linear time. Its efficiency can be expressed as a linear function, with the number of comparisons to find a target increasing linearly as the size of the list, N, increases. …
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