binsrch

binsrch(X, Y)

X must be a vector sorted in ascending order.

Y is a scalar/vector/tuple/matrix/dictionary/table.

binsrch means binary search. For each element in Y, binsrch locates its position in X. If nothing is found, it returns -1(s).

For optimal performance, we should use binsrch to search a short Y within a long sorted vector X. To search a large vector against another large unsorted vector, we should use function find, which is implemented using a hash table. However, building a hash table takes time and memory. Please also check the related function in.

1..100 binsrch 12 6 88 102;
// output
[11,5,87,-1]