Linear Search

Iterates through the list until the wanted item is found.

Implementation

from random import randint, choice
data = [randint(1, 100) for x in range(10)]
 
# implementation
def linear_search(arr: list[int], target: int) -> int:
	for i in range(len(arr)):
		if arr[i] == target:
			return i
 
print(linear_search(data, choice(data)))

Advantages

• Easy to program
• Fast on small datasets
• O(1) space

Disadvantages

• O(n) - slow on large datasets