A linear search is used to check if a value is in an array. There are two ways of doing this:-
Check every value in the list, even if you find the value immediatly.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | def linSearchV1(target,numbers): #Search for target in all of the numbers found=False for counter in range(len(numbers)): if numbers[counter]==target: found=True return found |
Check until you find the value you are looking for, this is much more effient and can on average half the ammount of time taken for the program to run.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 | def linSearchV2(target,numbers): #Search for the target numbers until it is found counter=0 found=False while not found and counter!=len(numbers): if numbers[counter]==target: found=True else: counter=counter+1 return found |
The same algorithms can be used to find a string in an array of strings or a character in a string.
