Sequential and Unstructured Search Algorithms

Algorithms that look for an item by examining a sequence or an unorganized collection one element at a time, without relying on the data being sorted or indexed. Linear search checks each element of a list in turn until it finds a match or reaches the end, the Boyer-Moore majority vote algorithm needs only one pass through a sequence to find a candidate for the element that makes up more than half of it, and Grover's algorithm searches an unstructured collection on a quantum computer using far fewer evaluations than a classical scan. An algorithm belongs here when its cited article describes searching or scanning a list or an unstructured space without a sorted order or an index. It excludes searches of sorted lists, which sit with the ordered list algorithms, and searches that rely on a tree or a hash table.