{ }SolveLog
⌕
Home / Patterns / Binary Search
19 worked problems

Binary Search

Halve the search space every step. Answers become permanently feasible after a boundary, or the sorted search space can discard half at once.

Recognition signal

When should you think of Binary Search?

Answers become permanently feasible after a boundary, or the sorted search space can discard half at once.

Core invariant

What must stay true?

The answer remains inside the maintained interval after every comparison.

Practice in a deliberate order

Starter

Build the template

  1. No starter problem is published yet.
Core

Recognize variations

  1. #33 Search in Rotated Sorted ArrayMedium
  2. #74 Search a 2D MatrixMedium
  3. #81 Search in Rotated Sorted Array IIMedium
  4. #153 Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted ArrayMedium
  5. #162 Find Peak ElementMedium
  6. #275 H-Index IIMedium
Stretch

Combine ideas under pressure

  1. #4 Median of Two Sorted ArraysHard
  2. #154 Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array IIHard
  3. #410 Split Array Largest SumHard
  4. #719 Find K-th Smallest Pair DistanceHard

What to learn in this cluster

  1. 01Search a sorted array
  2. 02Boundary and rotated-array search
  3. 03Binary search on the answer

All Binary Search problems

19 of 19 walkthroughs
Continue the cluster

Related patterns and study guides

Arrays & Hashing →Maths →Greedy →
Language choicePython vs C++ vs Java: which language should you use for DSA?Coding habitsHow to code effectively: a repeatable workflow from idea to solutionDebuggingHow to debug algorithm solutions without guessing