My objective is to compare the efficiency of binary search vs. linear search methods.
For this example I am using sample data provided by python's 'faker' library, which gave me 10,000 sample names (first + last).
utils.py pulls these names into a list that is used by search_binary.py and search_linear.py to return the index of a certain value (key).
In order to see the difference, we will search for every name in the list using both methods, and compare the results.
- Fork this repository to your local machine & cd into the repository
- From the command-line, enter
pip3 install faker - from the command line (Linux/MacOS), create the 'names.txt' file by using the following command:
python3 name_generator.py 10000 > names.txt
- Finally, enter the following two commands and compare the results:
time python3 search_linear.pytime python3 search_binary.py
python3 search_linear.py 2.19s user 0.01s system 99% cpu 2.199 total
python3 search_binary.py 0.06s user 0.01s system 95% cpu 0.073 total