[Tutor] Searching Sorted Lists

[Andrei]

DaSmith at technip.com wrote:
> Hi, Can someone tell me if there is a bulit in Binary search function for
> python lists ?
> 
> I am currently building lists and sorting them with a comparison function.
> The only list search function I know is List.Index(X), which is pretty
> inefficient I reckon, especially hen the lists are likely to contain 100's
> or 100's of members.

Hundreds or thousands of entries are pretty much nothing in computer 
terms. Unless you have measured that it's a bottleneck in your 
application, I wouldn't bother finding an alternative to index().

 > Is there a search function that uses a compariosn function / binary 
chop ?
 > or will I have to implement my own ?

It's quite easy to code it yourself if necessary. The Wikipedia has a 
nice article on it, including sample code which looks very much like 
Python: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_search

Yours,

Andrei

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