Book Image

PHP 7 Data Structures and Algorithms

By : Mizanur Rahman
5 (1)
Book Image

PHP 7 Data Structures and Algorithms

5 (1)
By: Mizanur Rahman

Overview of this book

PHP has always been the the go-to language for web based application development, but there are materials and resources you can refer to to see how it works. Data structures and algorithms help you to code and execute them effectively, cutting down on processing time significantly. If you want to explore data structures and algorithms in a practical way with real-life projects, then this book is for you. The book begins by introducing you to data structures and algorithms and how to solve a problem from beginning to end using them. Once you are well aware of the basics, it covers the core aspects like arrays, listed lists, stacks and queues. It will take you through several methods of finding efficient algorithms and show you which ones you should implement in each scenario. In addition to this, you will explore the possibilities of functional data structures using PHP and go through advanced algorithms and graphs as well as dynamic programming. By the end, you will be confident enough to tackle both basic and advanced data structures, understand how they work, and know when to use them in your day-to-day work
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Binary search

Binary search is a very popular search algorithm in the programming world. In sequential search, we started from the beginning and scanned through each item to find the desired one. However, if the list is already sorted, then we do not need to search from the beginning or the end of the list. In a binary search algorithm, we start with the middle of the list, check whether the item in the middle is smaller or greater than the item we are looking for, and decide which way to go. This way, we divide the list by half and discard one half completely, just like the following image:

If we look at the preceding image, we have a sorted (ascending order) list of numbers in an array. We want to know whether item 7 is in the array or not. Since the array has 17 items (0 to 16 index), we will first go to the middle index, which is the eighth index for this example. Now, the...