Question

I have a JSONArray in an Android application that has the following entries, for instance,

[start : 0.100 ,  stop : 2.312]
[start : 2.313 ,  stop : 4.565]  
[start : 4.566 ,  stop : 7.898]
...
...
...
[start 85.123 ,   stop : 97.659]

now giving a value = 86.235, I want to get the index of which this number is greater than and less than

start <= value <= stop

without traversing the entire array each time I want to look for an entry? Is this possible by mapping this to a different data structure or do I have to traverse the array each time to figure out which item in the array this is greater than and less than?

Answer 1

If it is sorted. The fastest would be Binary Search. That meets the requirment of

without traversing the entire array each time I want to look for an
entry?

Since O (logn) < n .