At 12:45 -0400 on 10/24/2013, Tony Thigpen wrote about Re: Linear search vs binary:
All entries will be fixed length. Can't really have variable length and use a binary search.
That depends. If the table you are sorting is a table of pointers to the actual data (and is ordered by the compare field), the entries can be variable length so long as the compare field is fixed length and is preceded by an entry length field. You use the pointer to find the compare field of an entry and once you find the correct entry, you back up to the location of the entry length and can then use the entry.
