Linear Search in 2 Minutes | All You Need to Know #linearsearch #searchalgorithms #dsa #daa #shorts

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:01]Hello everyone. Welcome to Devjit Decodes. In this video, let us have a quick recap about linear search.

[00:00:06]Suppose say you are trying to find your friend's name from a list of 1,000 names, and those names are not sorted alphabetically. So, in that case, what you are supposed to do?

[00:00:15]You will be starting from the first name and will be going one by one until unless you are finding your friend's name, right? So, that is how this linear search is also working.

[00:00:24]It starts finding one element from the starting position. It goes one by one.

[00:00:29]It checks one by one and it tries to find the target element.

[00:00:34]So, what is linear search? It is an algorithm that is a searching algorithm.

[00:00:38]And this particular linear search works on data structures like array, linked list.

[00:00:44]And this particular linear search, does it follow any kind of advanced program paradigm like divide and conquer or anything like that? The answer is no. It is a simple sequential searching paradigm, you can call it.

[00:00:57]Now, what is the time complexity say of linear search?

[00:01:01]Say, what you are doing in case of linear search? You are starting from the first element and you are trying to find one by one.

[00:01:06]Suppose the element you are trying to find, that is present at the very beginning.

[00:01:11]So, in that case, what will happen? You will be finding that element in only one attempt. So, the time complexity becomes order of one.

[00:01:18]But, what is this case? This is basically the best case because you are trying to find one element and you are getting it at the very first place.

[00:01:26]And that is a best case scenario and this in this case, the time complexity becomes order of one.

[00:01:31]But, what is the worst case scenario?

[00:01:33]Suppose the element you are trying to find, that is at the very end. So, in that case, you need to traverse all the elements one by one to reach that element. Or else, say the element you are trying to find is not present at all in that list or in the data. So, in that case also, you need to traverse the entire elements to conclude that this element is not there at all. So, in both the cases, you are traversing the entire n elements. So, in that case, the time complexity becomes order of n.

[00:02:00]So, this is all about linear search, but if you can see, this particular linear search is not that effective because it is taking or it is traversing all the element to find the actual target element in [clears throat] case of the worst-case scenario.

[00:02:14]So, in the next videos, we'll be seeing one more effective searching algorithm known as binary search.

[00:02:20]Thank you for watching, and one detailed video about this linear search is already available in the data playlist.

[00:02:25]I am putting that link in the first pinned comment. You can check out. Thank you for watching, and stay tuned for the next videos.