How do I find the closest array element to an arbitrary (non-member) number?

Question

Seemingly similar questions: \"Finding closest number in an array\" (in Java) and \"find nearest match to array of doubles\" (actually a geography problem).

Answer 1

Perhaps not the fastest solution, but certainly pleasant eye-candy:

double search;
double[] array;

var nearest = (
    from value in array
    orderby Math.Abs(value - search)
    select value).First();

var index = array.IndexOf(nearest);

Note that this will absolutely be slower than a binary search algorithm, because it need to process each element in the array and sorting means building a hash table of those items.