I was trying to execute the Binary Search program in python. I followed the algorithm steps yet it gives me this error. Here's my code:
def binarySearch(a,k,l,r):
if l > r:
return -1
else:
mid = (l+(r-l))//2
if(a[mid]>k):
return binarySearch(a,k,l,mid-1)
elif(a[mid]<k):
return binarySearch(a,k,mid+1,r)
else:
return mid
t = int(input("Enter no. of test cases: "))
for _ in range(t):
n,k = map(int, input().split())
a = list(map(int, input().rstrip().split()))
print(binarySearch(a,k,0,n))
Error:
return binarySearch(a,k,mid+1,r)
File "e:/Coding/Algorithms/Searching/binarySearch.py", line 10, in binarySearch
return binarySearch(a,k,mid+1,r)
File "e:/Coding/Algorithms/Searching/binarySearch.py", line 10, in binarySearch
return binarySearch(a,k,mid+1,r) [Previous line repeated 994 more times]
File "e:/Coding/Algorithms/Searching/binarySearch.py", line 3, in binarySearch if r < l:
RecursionError: maximum recursion depth exceeded in comparison
Your error lies in this line:
else:
mid = (l+(r-l))//2
You need to divide (r-l)//2
and then add l
but you are doing (l+(r-l))//2
which results in (l+r-l)//2 == r//2
.
Change it to l + (r-l)//2
.
What happens is when this condition is true:
elif(a[mid]<k):
return binarySearch(a,k,mid+1,r)
r
stays the same and since you are always dividing r
without considering l
, mid
never changes. So, you get a recursion depth exceeded error.
Also, the upper bound of the search is n-1
where n
is the length of the array. If the n
in your function call is the length of the array (it isn't obvious from the code), you need to subtract one as follows:
binarySearch(a,k,0,n-1))