+Searching is the task of finding whether a particular value exists in a collection and, if it does, where it lives (its index, pointer, node, or associated value). It shows up everywhere: checking if a username is taken, locating a record in a database, finding a file in an index, routing packets, or matching a word inside a document. The “shape” of your data, unsorted list, sorted array, hash table, tree, or text stream, determines what kinds of search strategies are possible and how fast they can be.
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