How to find if Array contains a value?

Discussing 3 options to find an element in Array in Java

Suraj Mishra

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Javarevisited

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4 min read

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Apr 4, 2023

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Originally Published in https://asyncq.com/

Introduction

• Finding value in the collection of value is a very common and often-used operation in software development.
• I have seen people using all kinds of approaches to solving this problem from naive to optimized.
• In this article, we will learn the different options to find an element in Array in Java.

Input

• Our input array contains primitive data of ids. and we need to search if this input array contains id->3.

int[] ids = { 1,2,13,14,15,3,10,11,12,4,5,6,7,8,9 };
int inputId = 3;

Option 1

• One of the naive approaches is to visit all the elements in the array, one element at a time.
• Additionally tracking the status of the target element if it exists in the array.
• As soon we see the element we toggle the status from false to true.
• Once the loop is finished we return the status flag.

        boolean valExist = false;
        for (int id : ids) {
            if (inputId == id) {…