Java Programming - Linear Search

Introduction to Computer Science - Java

Linear Search

Linear searching is a way to find if a certain element (number , string , etc. ) is in a specified array. The array can be in any order, or be completely jumbled and this search will find the element if it is there. If the element is found we can return the index where the element is located in the array. If the element is not found we can return -1. We can assume no array will ever have an negative number as an index. Our approach will be to check every element in the array to see if it is what we are looking for. We will use a loop to cycle through the array. Here goes:

int findElement(int yourArray[], int tobefound)// method to find index of specified element { final int notfound = -1; int counter; for( counter = 0; counter<yourArray.length; counter++ ) { if(tobefound == yourArray[counter])//check if we found the number we are looking for { return counter; } }//end for loop //if we got this far we must not have found the number return notfound; }