How to perform a binary search on IList?

Question

Simple question - given an IList how do you perform a binary search without writing the method yourself and without copying the data to a type with bui

Answer 1

If you can use .NET 3.5, you can use the build in Linq extension methods:

using System.Linq;

IList<string> ls = ...;
var orderedList = ls.OrderBy(x => x).ToList();
orderedList.BinarySearch(...);

However, this is really just a slightly different way of going about Andrew Hare's solution, and is only really helpful if you are searching multiple times off of the same ordered list.

Answer 2

Here's my version of Lasse's code. I find it useful to be able to use a lambda expression to perform the search. When searching in a list of objects, it permits to pass only the key that was used to sort. Implementations that use IComparer are trivially derived from this one.

I also like to return ~lower when no match is found. Array.BinarySearch does it and it allows you to know where the item you searched for should be inserted in order to keep the ordering.

/// <summary>
/// Performs a binary search on the specified collection.
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="TItem">The type of the item.</typeparam>
/// <typeparam name="TSearch">The type of the searched item.</typeparam>
/// <param name="list">The list to be searched.</param>
/// <param name="value">The value to search for.</param>
/// <param name="comparer">The comparer that is used to compare the value
/// with the list items.</param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static int BinarySearch<TItem, TSearch>(this IList<TItem> list,
    TSearch value, Func<TSearch, TItem, int> comparer)
{
    if (list == null)
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException("list");
    }
    if (comparer == null)
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException("comparer");
    }

    int lower = 0;
    int upper = list.Count - 1;

    while (lower <= upper)
    {
        int middle = lower + (upper - lower) / 2;
        int comparisonResult = comparer(value, list[middle]);
        if (comparisonResult < 0)
        {
            upper = middle - 1;
        }
        else if (comparisonResult > 0)
        {
            lower = middle + 1;
        }
        else
        {
            return middle;
        }
    }

    return ~lower;
}

/// <summary>
/// Performs a binary search on the specified collection.
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="TItem">The type of the item.</typeparam>
/// <param name="list">The list to be searched.</param>
/// <param name="value">The value to search for.</param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static int BinarySearch<TItem>(this IList<TItem> list, TItem value)
{
    return BinarySearch(list, value, Comparer<TItem>.Default);
}

/// <summary>
/// Performs a binary search on the specified collection.
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="TItem">The type of the item.</typeparam>
/// <param name="list">The list to be searched.</param>
/// <param name="value">The value to search for.</param>
/// <param name="comparer">The comparer that is used to compare the value
/// with the list items.</param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static int BinarySearch<TItem>(this IList<TItem> list, TItem value,
    IComparer<TItem> comparer)
{
    return list.BinarySearch(value, comparer.Compare);
}

Answer 3

You can use List<T>.BinarySearch(T item). If you want to use a custom comparer then use List<T>.BinarySearch(T item, IComparer<T> comparer). Take a look at this MSDN link for more details.

Answer 4

I like the solution with the extension method. However, a bit of warning is in order.

This is effectively Jon Bentley's implementation from his book Programming Pearls and it suffers modestly from a bug with numeric overflow that went undiscovered for 20 years or so. The (upper+lower) can overflow Int32 if you have a large number of items in the IList. A resolution to this is to do the middle calculation a bit differently using a subtraction instead; Middle = Lower + (Upper - Lower) / 2;

Bentley also warned in Programming Pearls that while the binary search algorithm was published in 1946 and the first correct implementation wasn't published until 1962.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_search#Numerical_difficulties

Answer 5

I have been struggling with getting this right for some time now. In particular the return values for edge cases as specified in MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/w4e7fxsh.aspx

I have now copied the ArraySortHelper.InternalBinarySearch() from .NET 4.0 and made my own flavor for various reasons.

Usage:

var numbers = new List<int>() { ... };
var items = new List<FooInt>() { ... };

int result1 = numbers.BinarySearchIndexOf(5);
int result2 = items.BinarySearchIndexOfBy(foo => foo.bar, 5);

This should work with all .NET types. I have tried int, long and double so far.

Implementation:

public static class BinarySearchUtils
{
    public static int BinarySearchIndexOf<TItem>(this IList<TItem> list,
        TItem targetValue, IComparer<TItem> comparer = null)
    {
        Func<TItem, TItem, int> compareFunc =
            comparer != null ? comparer.Compare :
            (Func<TItem, TItem, int>) Comparer<TItem>.Default.Compare;
        int index = BinarySearchIndexOfBy(list, compareFunc, targetValue);
        return index;
    }

    public static int BinarySearchIndexOfBy<TItem, TValue>(this IList<TItem> list,
        Func<TItem, TValue, int> comparer, TValue value)
    {
        if (list == null)
            throw new ArgumentNullException("list");

        if (comparer == null)
            throw new ArgumentNullException("comparer");

        if (list.Count == 0)
            return -1;

        // Implementation below copied largely from .NET4
        // ArraySortHelper.InternalBinarySearch()
        int lo = 0;
        int hi = list.Count - 1;
        while (lo <= hi)
        {
            int i = lo + ((hi - lo) >> 1);
            int order = comparer(list[i], value);

            if (order == 0)
                return i;
            if (order < 0)
            {
                lo = i + 1;
            }
            else
            {
                hi = i - 1;
            }
        }

        return ~lo;
    }
}

Unit tests:

[TestFixture]
public class BinarySearchUtilsTest
{
    [Test]
    public void BinarySearchReturnValueByMsdnSpecification()
    {
        var numbers = new List<int>() { 1, 3 };

        // Following the MSDN documentation for List<T>.BinarySearch:
        // http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/w4e7fxsh.aspx

        // The zero-based index of item in the sorted List(Of T), if item is found;
        int index = numbers.BinarySearchIndexOf(1);
        Assert.AreEqual(0, index);

        index = numbers.BinarySearchIndexOf(3);
        Assert.AreEqual(1, index);


        // otherwise, a negative number that is the bitwise complement of the
        // index of the next element that is larger than item
        index = numbers.BinarySearchIndexOf(0);
        Assert.AreEqual(~0, index);

        index = numbers.BinarySearchIndexOf(2);
        Assert.AreEqual(~1, index);


        // or, if there is no larger element, the bitwise complement of Count.
        index = numbers.BinarySearchIndexOf(4);
        Assert.AreEqual(~numbers.Count, index);
    }
}

I just scissored this out from my own code, so please comment if it doesn't work out of the box.

Hope this settles the issue with a working implementation once and for all, at least according to MSDN specs.

Answer 6

If you need a ready-made implementation for binary search on IList<T>s, Wintellect's Power Collections has one (in Algorithms.cs):

/// <summary>
/// Searches a sorted list for an item via binary search. The list must be sorted
/// by the natural ordering of the type (it's implementation of IComparable&lt;T&gt;).
/// </summary>
/// <param name="list">The sorted list to search.</param>
/// <param name="item">The item to search for.</param>
/// <param name="index">Returns the first index at which the item can be found. If the return
/// value is zero, indicating that <paramref name="item"/> was not present in the list, then this
/// returns the index at which <paramref name="item"/> could be inserted to maintain the sorted
/// order of the list.</param>
/// <returns>The number of items equal to <paramref name="item"/> that appear in the list.</returns>
public static int BinarySearch<T>(IList<T> list, T item, out int index)
        where T: IComparable<T>
{
    // ...
}