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Scott Gordon
Scott Gordon

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Linear Search

#python #algorithms #programming 
# linear_search.py
#   This program uses a linear search of an array of size n for
#   value x 
# by: Scott Gordon

things = ["bike", "house", "cat", "computer", "hammer"]

def linear_search(array, n, x):
    answer = "Not found!"
    for i in range(1, n):
        if array[i] == x:
            answer = i
    return answer

print(linear_search(things, 5, "cat")) # prints the index of "cat" which is 2
print(linear_search(things, 5, "hammer")) # prints the index of "hammer" which is 4
print(linear_search(things, 5, "pasta")) # prints Not found!
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Top comments (2)

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diegofranco2001 profile image
DiegoFranco2001 •

Why not this? It break the loop when find the element, there is another way by getting the length of the array too. :D

def linear_search (array, element):
    for i, e in enumerate(array):
        if array[i] == element:
            return i
    return "Not found!"
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sagordondev profile image
Scott Gordon •

yeah, i had added that to the better linear search algo after this one. And yes using len(array) is more Pythonic but I was trying to write it as close to psuedocode as possible while still using Python.

Thanks for the suggestions though!

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