Searching for something in a sorted list is much faster than looking through a random mess. In Find Target Index, you will implement an efficient way to find exactly where a specific number is hiding inside a pre-sorted array.
Instead of checking every single item from start to finish, you can use a "divide and conquer" strategy. By looking at the middle element, you can immediately rule out half of the list and zero in on the target twice as fast. It is a powerful logic that is used in almost every piece of software today.
For example, if you are looking for 30 in the list [10, 20, 30, 40, 50], your algorithm should tell you that it is sitting at index 3. If the number isn’t there at all, you will just return -1 to indicate it couldn’t be found.
Algorithm Flow
Solution Approach
When searching in a sorted list, Binary Search is far more efficient than a linear scan because it uses a divide-and-conquer strategy.
The algorithm maintains two pointers, low and high, to define the search space. In each step, it checks the middle element. If the target is not found, it narrows the search to either the lower or upper half of the remaining elements. This reduces the search space logarithmically, achieving O(log n) performance.
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