Linear Search Algorithm in DSA Javascript - Build from Scratch

Linear Search Algorithm

📖 Scenario: You are helping a librarian find a specific book in a shelf. The shelf is a list of book titles. You will write a program to search for a book title by checking each book one by one until you find it.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple linear search program that looks for a given book title in a list of books and tells if it is found or not.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an array called books with exact titles: 'The Hobbit', '1984', 'Pride and Prejudice', 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'The Great Gatsby'

Create a variable called searchTitle with the exact value '1984'

Use a for loop with variable index to go through books

Inside the loop, use an if statement to check if books[index] equals searchTitle

Create a variable called found set to false before the loop and set it to true when the book is found

After the loop, print 'Found' if found is true, otherwise print 'Not Found'

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Searching for an item in a list is a common task, like finding a book on a shelf or a contact in a phone.

💼 Career

Understanding linear search helps in many programming jobs where you need to find data without special indexing or sorting.

1

Create the list of books

Create an array called books with these exact titles: 'The Hobbit', '1984', 'Pride and Prejudice', 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'The Great Gatsby'

DSA Javascript

// Create the array books with the given titles
// Your code here

Hint

Use square brackets [] to create an array and separate titles with commas.

2

Set the book title to search

Create a variable called searchTitle and set it to the string '1984'

DSA Javascript

const books = ['The Hobbit', '1984', 'Pride and Prejudice', 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'The Great Gatsby'];
// Create the variable searchTitle with value '1984'
// Your code here

Hint

Use const to create a variable and assign the exact string.

3

Search for the book using a loop

Create a variable called found and set it to false. Then use a for loop with variable index to go through books. Inside the loop, use an if statement to check if books[index] equals searchTitle. If yes, set found to true and use break to stop the loop.

DSA Javascript

const books = ['The Hobbit', '1984', 'Pride and Prejudice', 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'The Great Gatsby'];
const searchTitle = '1984';
// Create found variable and write the for loop to search
// Your code here

Hint

Remember to initialize found before the loop. Use break to stop once found.

4

Print the search result

After the loop, use console.log to print 'Found' if found is true, otherwise print 'Not Found'

DSA Javascript

const books = ['The Hobbit', '1984', 'Pride and Prejudice', 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'The Great Gatsby'];
const searchTitle = '1984';
let found = false;
for (let index = 0; index < books.length; index++) {
    if (books[index] === searchTitle) {
        found = true;
        break;
    }
}
// Print 'Found' if found is true, else print 'Not Found'
// Your code here

Hint

Use an if statement to check found and print the correct message.