What is the space complexity of the binary search algorithm?
Practice Questions
1 question
Q1
What is the space complexity of the binary search algorithm?
O(n)
O(log n)
O(1)
O(n log n)
Binary search has a space complexity of O(1) when implemented iteratively, as it uses a constant amount of space.
Questions & Step-by-step Solutions
1 item
Q
Q: What is the space complexity of the binary search algorithm?
Solution: Binary search has a space complexity of O(1) when implemented iteratively, as it uses a constant amount of space.
Steps: 7
Step 1: Understand what space complexity means. Space complexity measures how much memory an algorithm uses as the input size grows.
Step 2: Know that binary search is an algorithm used to find an item in a sorted list by repeatedly dividing the search interval in half.
Step 3: Recognize that binary search can be implemented in two ways: iteratively (using loops) and recursively (using function calls).
Step 4: For the iterative implementation, binary search only uses a few variables to keep track of the current position and the search boundaries. This means it uses a constant amount of space, regardless of the size of the input list.
Step 5: Therefore, the space complexity for the iterative version of binary search is O(1), which means it uses constant space.
Step 6: If binary search is implemented recursively, it uses additional space for each function call on the call stack, leading to a space complexity of O(log n), where n is the number of elements in the list.
Step 7: Conclude that the space complexity of binary search is O(1) for the iterative version.
