Lesson Introduction and Overview

Greetings! Today, we're exploring binary search, an efficient algorithm that pinpoints elements in a sorted list. It's analogous to locating a house number on a long street — rather than starting from one end, you begin in the middle and, based on whether the house number is higher or lower, you search the right or left half of the list.

We'll learn to:

  1. Understand binary search.
  2. Implement binary search using recursion and iteration in TypeScript.
  3. Analyze the time complexity of binary search.
Unveiling Binary Search

Binary search is a classic example of the divide-and-conquer strategy. It starts by examining the middle element of a sorted list. If the middle element matches the target, you're done! If not, binary search eliminates half of the remaining elements based on whether the target is greater or smaller than the middle element. This process repeats until the target is found or the list is exhausted.

Implementing Binary Search Using Recursion in TypeScript

Let's implement binary search in TypeScript using recursion. Here's the code, accompanied by detailed comments:

This function calls itself recursively, gradually narrowing down the search area until it finds the target.

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