551 views
Linked Lists are not suitable for _____.

A.    Binary Search
B.    Polynomial Manipulation
C.    Insertion
closed as a duplicate of: GATE1994-1.17, UGCNET-Sep2013-II-32
closed | 551 views

Correct Answer would be A) Binary Search

Because, Its will take $O(n/2)$ times for finding the middle element of the Linked list.

selected by
Why can;t we use binary search on a Linked List if all the elements of Linked List are in sorted order ?
In sorted order, still we have to traverse to the middle of linked list which takes O(n/2) which is O(n) only .

but, this can be made O(log n) by augmenting linked list with extra pointers like DLL, called skip list so that we can move in both the directions. which can give O(log n ) but not always, bcoz still worst is O(n).
@kapil then why do we use binary search in sorted array ? we use the same concept there rt ? we can apply binary search on sorted array to get down the complexity upto O(logn) .don't we need to traverse there ?
Sir, array uses indexing mechanism, we can directly goto a[ i ] and hence by direct access , we can compare our search element to middle element and then recur for left or right half..

@kapil thanks ...this indicates i know nothing about anything

@shekhar sir,

your doubts help me very much to revise all the concepts and be up to date...

keep it up sir,,, :)