BSEARCH(3)

NAME
bsearch - binary search

SYNOPSIS

#include <stdlib.h>

void *bsearch(const void *key, const void *base, size_t nmemb, size_t size, int (*compar)(const void *, const void *));

DESCRIPTION

bsearch searches an array beginning at base for any element that matches key, using binary search. nmemb is the element count of the array; size is the size of each element.

The array must be sorted in ascending order with respect to the comparison function compar (which you supply as the last argument of bsearch).

You must define the comparison function (*compar) to have two arguments; its result must be negative if the first argument is less than the second, zero if the two arguments match, and positive if the first argument is greater than the second (where ``less than'' and ``greater than'' refer to whatever arbitrary ordering is appropriate).

RETURNS

Returns a pointer to an element of array that matches key. If more than one matching element is available, the result may point to any of them.

PORTABILITY

bsearch is ANSI.

No supporting OS subroutines are required.

AUTHORS

Steve Chamberlain
    Author.

Roland Pesch
    Author.

Red Hat Support

Jeff Johnston
    Author.

COPYRIGHT

This file documents the ANSI C library.

Copyright (C) 1992, 1993, 1994-2014 Red Hat, Inc.

libc includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors.

libc includes software developed by Martin Jackson, Graham Haley and Steve Chamberlain of Tadpole Technology and released to Cygnus.

libc uses floating-point conversion software developed at AT&T, which includes this copyright information:

The author of this software is David M. Gay.

Copyright (c) 1991 by AT&T.

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any purpose without fee is hereby granted, provided that this entire notice is included in all copies of any software which is or includes a copy or modification of this software and in all copies of the supporting documentation for such software.

THIS SOFTWARE IS BEING PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY. IN PARTICULAR, NEITHER THE AUTHOR NOR AT&T MAKES ANY REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY OF ANY KIND CONCERNING THE MERCHANTABILITY OF THIS SOFTWARE OR ITS FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, subject to the terms of the GNU General Public License, which includes the provision that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions.