TheAlgorithms-C/searching/sentinel_linear_search.c
Lars Müller ce3f01f54c
Sentinel search: Remove bounds check (fixes #887) (#888)
... which is the entire point of sentinel search
2021-10-16 19:28:37 -05:00

80 lines
2.8 KiB
C

/**
* @file
* @brief [Linear Search with Sentinel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_search#With_a_sentinel) algorithm implementation
* @details
* This algorithm saves the last element of the array,
* then replaces it with the value to be found and sets it as the sentinel.
* When searching, compares each element with the sentinel.
* If the same, returns the index. If the index is the index of the sentinel, it means it was not found.
* Of course, if the value to be found is the last element, we return the index of the last element.
* @author [Regan Yue](https://github.com/ReganYue)
* Time Complexity: O(N)
*/
#include <stdio.h> /// for IO operations
#include <assert.h> /// for assert
/**
* @brief Utility function to search for an element in the array and return the index of the element
* @details
* The so-called "sentinel" is to use a special value as the boundary key of the array.
* One less judgment statement can be used.
* The purpose is to avoid checking whether the entire array is searched at each step in the search
* process, so as to improve the efficiency of the program.
* We can use the last value of the array as the "sentinel", the data storage index i
* starts from 0 and ends at len-1, then the position where the index of arr is n-1 indicates
* that there is no data temporarily, which is the "sentinel" key.
* If the last element of the array is equal to the key, directly return the index of the last element.
* Before setting the last element of the array as the key, we hand over the last element of the array to temp for temporary storage.
* Then go to the array to find the key. If the key is found, stop the search, and then compare the found element index with len-1.
* If it is equal, it means it was not found. If it is not equal, it is found.
* @param arr this is an array containing elements
* @param len this is the number of elements in the array
* @param key the value we want to search
* @return i if found, otherwise -1 is returned.
*/
int sentinel_linear_search( int arr[], int len, int key ){
if(key == arr[len-1]){
return len-1;
}
int temp = arr[len-1];
arr[len-1] = key;
int i = 0;
while (arr[len-1] != arr[i]) {
i++;
}
arr[len-1] = temp;
return i != len-1 ? i : -1;
}
/**
* @brief Self-test implementations
* @returns void
*/
static void test(){
int n,i;
n = 5;
/* init array */
int arr[] = { 1, 2, 2, 6, 99, 100, 999 };
assert(sentinel_linear_search( arr, n, 1 )==0);
assert(sentinel_linear_search( arr, n, 2 )==1);
assert(sentinel_linear_search( arr, n, 6 )==3);
assert(sentinel_linear_search( arr, n, 101 )==-1);
printf("All test cases have successfully passed!\n");
}
/**
* @brief Main function
* @returns 0 on exit
*/
int main(){
test(); // run self-test implementations
return 0;
}