Searching
Searching is an operation that is applied on any of the data structure looking for the existence of an item or element within the same. So searching is simply a Boolean operation that returns TRUE if the element looking for exists in the data structure, otherwise to return FALSE. In almost every area of computing field searching is found. So understanding and implementation of searching is must for a computer programmer along with learning of data structure. Following are the few examples of searching:
. Searching a file in a directory or folder
. Searching name in a list of names
. Searching an address of a web site
. Searching a free partition to allocate memory to process
. Searching a free space in disk to allocate for a file
Basically searching operation is applied to every data structure to find out the existence of a member or element within it. The type of searching used for implementation depends on:
. Direct availability of index or address of elements
. Order of elements that are stored in data structure
We study here different types of searching like linear search and binary search applied on linear data structure, lists (array and linked list).