the most important thing being as Hendrik said that it is sorted, which in your example it is not.
Say you have: ["apple", "banana", "cherry", "kiwi", "orange", "peach" "pear", "pineapple", ] and you are looking for banana: middle element is orange (or kiwi) take "apple", "banana", "cherry", "kiwi", middle element is cherry take "apple", "banana" middle element is banana yeah a hit My description is a bit shabby but you get the idea. Whether it beats a dictionary ... I don't think so, I've only done this when searching through huge sorted files with random file access, not with arrays in flash. regards Hans On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 4:44 PM, Henrik Andersson <he...@henke37.cjb.net>wrote: > Merrill, Jason wrote: > >> I understand what a binary search algorithm is, but am wondering how >> that could be implemented on an array in Actionscript (if at all) >> without using methods that would defeating the purpose of a binary >> search (speed). Anyone have experience in this area? >> >> So for example, if you have a list like this: >> >> ["apple", "orange", "banana", "pear", "cherry", "pineapple", "kiwi", >> "peach"] >> >> Then to do a binary search for say, "pineapple", as I understand binary >> searching, you would first split the list in the middle (between "pear" >> and "cherry") and determine if "pineapple" was in that list - if not, >> search the other half and so on until you find "pineapple". >> > > That is wrong, you know that it will be in a certain half due to the list > being sorted. There is no need to scan the half for the object, by the list > already being sorted, you know that if the object exists, it's in that half. > Just compare the middle element, if it is bigger, use the left half, else > use the right half. > > _______________________________________________ > Flashcoders mailing list > Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com > http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders > _______________________________________________ Flashcoders mailing list Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders
