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What happens if you perform a linear search on an empty array?It will find the target valueIt will return 0It will return -1It will cause an error

Question

What happens if you perform a linear search on an empty array?

  • It will find the target value
  • It will return 0
  • It will return -1
  • It will cause an error
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Solution

When you perform a linear search on an empty array, the search algorithm checks each element one by one to find a target value. In the case of an empty array, there are no elements to check. Therefore, the algorithm concludes that the target value does not exist in the array.

Among the given options:

  1. It will find the target value: This is incorrect because there are no elements in an empty array to find anything.
  2. It will return 0: This is typically incorrect for a linear search; returning 0 might imply that the target is at the first index, which isn't applicable here.
  3. It will return -1: This is the most likely scenario because returning -1 usually indicates that the target was not found.
  4. It will cause an error: A well-implemented linear search in an empty array should not cause an error; it simply processes that there are no elements.

Thus, the correct answer is that it will return -1 to indicate that the target value is not present in the empty array.

This problem has been solved

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