Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Computer Science Introduction to Algorithms Algorithms in Code Binary Search Implementations

Calvin Secrest
Calvin Secrest
24,815 Points
Posted by Calvin Secrest
Calvin Secrest
24,815 Points

Recursive binary search with iterative

So if we continue with this code snippet and tried to verify the call would it look like this:

def recursive_binary_search(list, target, start=0, end=None):
    if end is None:
        end = len(list) - 1
    if start > end:
        return -1

    mid = (start + end) // 2

    if target == list[mid]:
        return mid
    else:
        if target < list[mid]:
            return recursive_binary_search(list, target, start, mid-1)
        else:
            return recursive_binary_search(list, target, mid+1, end)

# The if statement returns the index position of the target if found, else returns None

def verify(result, index):
  print("Target found: ", result)

  elif index is not None:
      print("Target found at index: ", index)

  elif:
    print("Target not found in list")

numbers = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
result = recursive_binary_search(numbers, 12)
verify(result)

result = result = recursive_binary_search(numbers, 6)
verify(result)