Searching & Binary Search — Free DSA Tutorial
Learn Searching & Binary Search in DSA with a free, beginner-friendly tutorial, examples and practice for Indian students on Syllab.in.
TL;DR: Learn Searching & Binary Search in DSA with a free, beginner-friendly tutorial, examples and practice for Indian students on Syllab.in.
Written & reviewed by the Syllab.in Academic Team (CBSE/NCERT subject experts) · Updated
Searching & Binary Search in DSA
Linear search scans every element until it finds the target — O(n). It works on any list. Binary search is far faster — O(log n) — but requires the array to be SORTED. It repeatedly halves the search range by comparing the target with the middle element.
Binary search is deceptively tricky: get the boundary conditions (low ≤ high) and the mid calculation right, or you loop forever or miss the answer. It also generalises to "binary search on the answer" — a powerful pattern for optimisation problems.
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