Suppose that some company has just sent your company a huge list of customers. You respond to that company with a strongly worded note because you only wanted the phone number of one customer, Mike Smith. They, in turn, reply to you suggesting that you simply find him quickly using binary search. Explain why it might not, in fact, be possible to use binary search on the huge list.

Question

Janet Hartman

Computers & Technology

18 September, 16:18

Suppose that some company has just sent your company a huge list of customers. You respond to that company with a strongly worded note because you only wanted the phone number of one customer, Mike Smith. They, in turn, reply to you suggesting that you simply find him quickly using binary search. Explain why it might not, in fact, be possible to use binary search on the huge list.

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Milton Richards · Answer 1

Actually this is possible

First sort the list of all names in ascending order based on string comparison (ASCII value)

The middle can be found as we have total number of contacts

Binary search can be applied by comparing the name string

If any of these is not given or time bound then binary search can not be applied.