LabVIEW
Darin's Weakly Nugget - 2/14/11
What better day to think about splitting up (ie. bisection) than Valentine's Day. It is a well-known fact that the search algorithm utilized by Search 1D Array will not take advantage of situations where the input array is sorted. So what? The bisection method for searching an ordered list can complete in O(log2(N)) steps as opposed to O(N). With large lists, this can be quite dramatic, especially when you are searching many times. Someday this oversight may be remedied, until then, there is a useful tool for searching 1D DBL arrays which implements the bisection method:
\vi.lib\ptbypt\Other Functions.llb\BinarySearch.vi
Once again, love the icon, but have a few quibbles with the code. As much as I dislike the standard behavior, the norm is to return -1 when the value is not found, this VI returns 0 while relying on you to check the isFound boolean. For some reason, the mini-Rube divide by 2 followed by Round toward -Infinity is used where a simple Quotient & Remainder would do the trick (and keep things blue). Outside of that, this VI can really speed up your searching, and often it can be worthwhile to sort a list once to speed all future searching.
Once you have tried this out and are enjoying the results, try to inspire NI to give us a "real" function with all the polymorphic bells and whistles by voting here:
Side Note 1: I had never really noticed that the Sign function returns the same datatype as the input. I wouldn't mind an output configuration here, as driving a Case Structure is probably not that uncommon.
Side Note 2: The previous behavior got me thinking about complex data passed to the Sign function. Very interesting, gives you the corresponding point on the unit circle, ie. same phase unit amplitude complex value. I can see a few code mods in my future.
Side Note 3: Exploring complex numbers in the Sign function got me wondering: Why are there increment/decrement buttons on the complex number controls if they aren't allowed to increment or decrement anything? Same for the System spinner controls.
Side Note 1: I had never really noticed that the Sign function returns the same datatype as the input. I wouldn't mind an output configuration here, as driving a Case Structure is probably not that uncommon.
For a simple numeric, I use the cases 1, 0, -1, default. What other data types have you in mind (uncleare behaviour with complex numbers is already shown by you).
Well, I checked with 'singels' ('cause this is valentines day), and everyone knows that they are a bit on the side when it's about representing 0 and 1. But all worked fine. 
Felix
