Searching Algorithms

A searching algorithm is an algorithm that aims to find an item within a collection of items.

Major Topics

There are many kinds of searching algorithms, including:

• List Search Algorithms, which search for an item in a linear (one-dimensional) collection, for example, an array.
• Tree Searching Algorithms, which search for an item in a tree.

• String Searching Algorithms, which search for patterns within strings.
• Graph Searching Algorithms, which search for an node or a path in a graph.

Search Techniques

There are two major search methodologies:

Brute Force and Exhaustive Search. It is of two types:

• BFS
• DFS

Heuristic Search uses a heuristic function to help guide the search. When a node is expanded, each of its children is evaluated using a search function. This can be of many types:

• Hill Climbing
• A* Algorithm
• AO* Algorithm

See Also

• Sorting