A Collection of Code Snippets in as Many Programming Languages as Possible
This project is maintained by TheRenegadeCoder
Welcome to the Linear Search page! Here, you’ll find a description of the project as well as a list of sample programs written in various languages.
Linear search is quite intuitive, it is basically searching an element in an array by traversing the array from the beginning to the end and comparing each item in the array with the key. If a particular array entry matches with the key the position is recorded and the loop is stopped. The algorithm for this is:
The performance of searching algorithms is generally defined in “Big O notation”. If you are not familiar with such notations, please refer to the relevant article by Rob Bell or the wikipedia entry listed in further readings below.
Best case | O(1) |
Average case | O(n) |
Worst case | O(n) |
Linear search is not efficient for large arrays, but for relatively smaller arrays it works fine.
Iteration 1
array[i] = array[0] = 1
key = 3
key != array[i]
Iteration 2
array[i] = array[1] = 2
key = 3
key != array[i]
Iteration 3
array[i] = array[2] = 3
key = 3
key = array[i]
break
flag = 1
pos = 2
Write a sample program that takes a list of numbers (e.g. “1, 2, 3, 4, 5”) and a key (e.g. “3”).
linear-search.lang "1, 4, 2, 9" "3"
In addition, there should be some error handling for situations where the user doesn’t supply correct input.
Description | List Input | Target Integer Input | Output |
---|---|---|---|
No Input | error* | ||
Missing Input: List | 1, 2, 3, 4 |
error* | |
Missing Input: Target | "" |
5 |
error* |
Sample Input: First True | 1, 3, 5, 7 |
1 |
true |
Sample Input: Last True | 1, 3, 5, 7 |
7 |
true |
Sample Input: Middle True | 1, 3, 5, 7 |
5 |
true |
Sample Input: One True | 5 |
5 |
true |
Sample Input: One False | 5 |
7 |
false |
Sample Input: Many False | 1, 3, 5, 6 |
7 |
false |
*The error string to print: Usage: please provide a list of integers ("1, 4, 5, 11, 12") and the integer to find ("11")