NOTE

Binary Search

Logarithmic search over a monotonic/sorted domain, including boundary variants.

Data Structures & AlgorithmsCreated Updated 1 min readhistorical

This is a historical learning note and may contain outdated or incomplete understanding.

Binary search repeatedly halves a sorted or monotonic search space, giving O(log n) comparisons.

The hardest part is usually boundary semantics: exact match, first/last equal, first >= target, or last <= target. Define an invariant and whether the interval is closed/open before writing the loop.

Compute midpoint without overflow in fixed-width languages using low + (high-low)/2 or the language’s safe equivalent.

Loading helpful count