medium Algorithms

Binary Search Implementation

The Brief

SwiftFind Analytics runs millions of product lookups per hour. Their engineers are benchmarking search implementations — yours goes up against the linear scan. Implement iterative binary search correctly and demonstrate it against a sorted dataset.

Acceptance Criteria

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1 Implement binary_search(arr, target) iteratively — no recursion

2 Return the zero-based index if found, or -1 if not found

3 Do not use arr.index() or in — you must compute midpoints manually

4 Demonstrate with at least three test cases: a match, a non-match, and an edge case

💡 Hints 0 / 3

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solution.py

Python 3

# SwiftFind — iterative binary search

def binary_search(arr, target):
    pass  # TODO: implement using low/high pointers


# TODO: at least three demonstrations
sorted_data = [1, 3, 7, 12, 19, 25, 34, 41, 56, 72, 89]

Console