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=== Purpose === The advantage of using binary search over a simpler "check every element" approach is speed. Since each step of the algorithm approximately halves the number of elements that need to be searched, each doubling of the size of the array only adds one iteration to the "while" loop above, as opposed to doubling the number of iterations. In other words, the number of steps required grows in proportion with the base-2 logarithm of the size of the array. In algorithmic complexity notation, binary search has O(log n) time complexity.
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