In this article, I will introduce you to the linear search algorithm using the C ++ programming language. A linear search is one of the most basic and useful algorithms, it moves sequentially through a data structure to find the corresponding value this is the reason why it is also known as the sequential search algorithm.
Before implementing the linear search using the C++ programming language, let’s first understand how linear search works.
How Linear Search Algorithm Works?
The linear search algorithm can be compared to looking for a book in a stack of books, you go through them all until you find the one that you want. Let’s understand it with a more simple example explained below.
Think of the linear search algorithm as a way to find your way through a contact list on your smartphone. A linear search begins at the beginning by reading each name until you find what you are looking for. In n terms of complexity, this is an O(n) search – the time it takes to search the list increases as the contact list increases.
Let’s understand the searching approach of linear search algorithm step by step:
- It starts the search from the leftmost element of the array and compares one by one the element we are looking for with each element in the array.
- If it finds a match between the searched element and the elements in the array, it returns the index of that element.
- If there is no match between the searched element and the elements of the array, then it returns -1.
Linear Search in C++ Programming Language
Now let’s see how to implement the linear search using the C++ programming language. The code below follows all the steps that I have mentioned above:
Output: 5 10 20 30 40 50 40 3
Conclusion
Linear search is a very simple searching algorithm. It cycles through the elements until the query is found, making it a linear algorithm. Its complexity is O (n), where n is the number of elements to iterate.
So this is how to implement the linear search algorithm by using the C++ programming language. If you want to learn its implementation by using the Python programming language, you can check this article.
I hope you liked this article on linear search in C++ programming language. Feel free to ask your valuable questions in the comments section below.
