Binary Search in Javascript

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It’s useful to write a search function in such a way that it returns a negative value indicating the insertion point for the new element if the element is not found. Also, using recursion in a binary search is excessive and unnecessary. And finally, it’s a good practice to make the search algorithm generic by supplying a comparator function as a parameter. Below is the implementation.

function binarySearch(arr, el, compare_fn) {
    let m = 0;
    let n = arr.length - 1;
    while (m <= n) {
        let k = (n + m) >> 1;
        let cmp = compare_fn(el, arr[k]);
        if (cmp > 0) {
            m = k + 1;
        } else if(cmp < 0) {
            n = k - 1;
        } else {
            return k;
        }
    }
    return ~m;
}

This code with comments and a unit test here.

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