Linear Search Algorithm in DSA Typescript - Build from Scratch

Linear Search Algorithm

📖 Scenario: You are helping a store manager find a specific product ID in the list of products available in the store.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple linear search algorithm to find the position of a product ID in an array of product IDs.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an array called productIDs with exact values

Create a variable called targetID to hold the product ID to search

Use a for loop with variable i to search targetID in productIDs

Print the index of targetID if found, otherwise print -1

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Stores and inventory systems often need to find if a product is available by checking product IDs one by one.

💼 Career

Understanding linear search helps in debugging and improving simple search tasks in software development and data handling.

1

Create the product ID list

Create an array called productIDs with these exact numbers: 101, 203, 405, 607, 809

DSA Typescript

// Your code here

Hint

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

2

Set the target product ID

Create a variable called targetID and set it to 405

DSA Typescript

const productIDs = [101, 203, 405, 607, 809];
// Your code here

Hint

Use const to create a variable and assign the number 405.

3

Search for the target ID using linear search

Use a for loop with variable i to go through productIDs. Inside the loop, use an if statement to check if productIDs[i] equals targetID. If yes, print i and stop the loop.

DSA Typescript

const productIDs = [101, 203, 405, 607, 809];
const targetID = 405;
// Your code here

Hint

Use a for loop from 0 to productIDs.length. Use === to compare values. Use break to stop the loop when found.

4

Print -1 if target not found

Modify the code to print -1 if targetID is not found in productIDs. Use a variable called foundIndex initialized to -1. Update it inside the loop if found. After the loop, print foundIndex.

DSA Typescript

const productIDs = [101, 203, 405, 607, 809];
const targetID = 405;
// Your code here

Hint

Use a variable foundIndex set to -1 before the loop. Change it to i if found. Print it after the loop.