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CoffeeNode bSearch
CoffeeNode bSearch is a binary search implementation for JavaScript; it includes equality and proximity
search methods. Say npm install coffeenode-bsearch
and start searching faster today!
Why?
Binary search is a valuable tool to quickly locate items in sorted collections. Although anyone who has
ever used a dictionary or a telephone directory to locate some piece of information has naturally employed
an informal version of binary search, sadly this important algorithm is not too frequently implemented correctly;
as one writer put it,
"Nearly All Binary Searches and Mergesorts are broken" (notwithstanding, it may very well be that the
module presented here has its flaws and bugs; feel free to report issues). Assuming a correct
implementation, binary search will do at most ⌊log2(N)+1⌋ comparisons, which means that when
you otherwise had to look at up to a million values with a linear search, you'll get away with twenty
comparisons when doing binary search.
Another reason to publish yet another module for binary search is the scarcity of turn-key solutions that
(1) incorporate the most obvious and useful generalizations of binary search, and (2) do not rely
on special data structures like balanced trees (which most of the time you'd have to build before you can
search; given that the entire motivation for doing a binary search instead of a linear search is the sheer
amount of data to be searched, this can lead to significant overhead. I'm not a particular fan of algorithms
that force you to build a non-general data structure upfront that you'll then maybe only use once before
throwing it away).
There are three methods exported by this module; in order of ascending generality (yes, you can do a
mental binary search to locate the method that best fits your use case ;-):
-
Equality Search will return the index of a data list argument that equals the
probe search for, or null
if no element matches;
-
Interval Search which will return a possibly empty list of indices with those
elements of the data list that lie within a given distance form a certain probe; and
-
Proximity Search which will return the index of that element that lies closest
to a given probe.
It is possible to use your own comparison functions with these methods, so distance and ordering metrics
are in no way confined to the canonical example (i.e. locating a match in an ordered list of numbers which
are tested with the <
, ==
, and >
operators).
bSearch.equality
bSearch.equality
takes a list of sorted values (in ascending order) and either a probe value or else a
comparison handler as arguments; on success, it returns the index of the probe (or the value selected by the
comparison handler) within the data or else null
:
bSearch = require 'coffeenode-bsearch'
# http://oeis.org/A000217: Triangular numbers
data = [ 0, 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45, 55, 66, 78, 91, 105, 120, 136, 153, 171, 190, 210, 231, 253,
276, 300, 325, 351, 378, 406, 435, 465, 496, 528, 561, 595, 630, 666, 703, 741, 780, 820, 861, 903, 946,
990, 1035, 1081, 1128, 1176, 1225, 1275, 1326, 1378, 1431 ]
idx = bSearch.equality data, 300
if idx?
# prints `24 300`
console.log idx, data[ idx ]
else
console.log 'not found'
You can do more if you pass in a comparison handler instead of a probe value; the handler should accept
a single value (and possibly the current index) and return 0
where the probe is considered to equal the
value, -1
when the probe is less than the value, and +1
otherwise. This is exemplified by the default
handler used internally by bSearch.equality
:
handler = ( value, idx ) =>
return 0 if probe == value
return -1 if probe < value
return +1
bSearch.interval
bSearch.interval
builds on bSearch.equality
, but instead of returning a single index, it tries to find
a contiguous range of matching indices. With the same data
as in the previous example:
probe = 300
delta = 100
compare = ( value ) ->
return 0 if probe - delta <= value <= probe + delta
return -1 if probe - delta < value
return +1
[ lo_idx, hi_idx ] = bSearch.interval data, compare
if lo_idx?
# prints `[ 20, 27 ] [ 210, 378 ]`
console.log [ lo_idx, hi_idx, ], [ data[ lo_idx ], data[ hi_idx ], ]
else
console.log 'not found'
The printout tells us that values between 200
and 400
are to be found in positions 20
thru 27
of the
given data.
bSearch.closest
bSearch.closest
works like bSearch.equality
, except that it always returns a non-null index for a
non-empty data list, and that the result will point to (one of) the closest neighbors to the probe or
distance function passed in. With the same data
as in the previous examples:
handler = ( value, idx ) =>
return probe - value
probe = 1000
idx = bSearch.closest data, probe
if idx?
# prints `44 990`
console.log idx, data[ idx ]
else
console.log 'not found'
The second argument to bSearch.closest
may be a distance function similar to the one shown here or else
a probe value; in the latter case, the default distance function shown above will be used.
Example with Custom Distance Function
To convey a taste of the generality afforded by custom distance functions, we here present in all briefness
a pretty nonsensical example which implies finding words with a given number of a
s in them. Unlikely
you'll ever want to do that in the real world, but you get the idea.
Setup:
words = """abbatastic abracadabra fellah search canopy catalyst fad jaded alley tajmahal
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ferocious pretty horse""".split /\s+/
matcher = /a/g
get_distance = ( a, b ) ->
count_a = ( ( a.match matcher ) ? '' ).length
count_b = ( ( b.match matcher ) ? '' ).length
return count_a - count_b
match_three_as = ( word ) ->
return 3 - ( ( word.match matcher ) ? '' ).length
words.sort get_distance
Usage:
# Find any one word with three `a`s:
idx = bSearch.equality words, match_three_as
if idx?
console.log idx, words[ idx ]
else
console.log 'not found'
This should print
10 'tajmahal'
Note that the result is not complete as there are more words with three a
s. We account for that with
bSearch.interval
:
# Find all words with three `a`s:
[ lo_idx, hi_idx ] = bSearch.interval words, match_three_as
if lo_idx?
console.log [ lo_idx, hi_idx, ]
console.log words[ lo_idx .. hi_idx ]
else
console.log 'not found'
This should print
[ 10, 12 ]
[ 'tajmahal',
'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious',
'abbatastic' ]
- When the
data
argument is not sorted in a way that is compliant with the ordering semantics of the
implicit or explicit comparison handler, the behavior of both methods is undefined.
With 'ordering semantics' we here simple mean that when run across the entire data list, the values
di returned by the comparison function must always obey
di <= dj when i <= j.
As such, you can have a data list of numerically descending values
as long as your handler returns a series of non-descending comparison metrics when iterating over the list.
-
When you use a comparison handler that returns 0
for a range of values with the bSearch.equality
method, the returned index, if any, may point to any 'random' matching value; without knowing the data (and
the search algorithm), there is no telling which list element will be picked out.
-
Likewise, when using a distance function that returns the same minimum distance for more than a single
value with the bSearch.closest
method, the returned index, if any, may point to any 'random' matching
value.
-
Be aware that bSearch always uses JavaScript's strict
equality operator unless you pass in a comparison function. Strict equality comparisons
have their limitations and are generally
not to be used when comparing anything but numbers or else texts that are sorted according to Unicode
character values.
Caveats
This module has no test suite as yet, so its correctness and performance are more of a conjecture than a
proven fact. Also, we do presently no memoizing of comparison results which may or may not lead to
sub-optimal performance; since the implementation is intended to be completely agnostic as for the nature
of the searched data, caching is hardly to be implemented easily and correctly for the general case.
If indeed your comparison (or distance) function does rely on lengthy calculations, consider to implement
a memoizing functionality that fits your use case.