What does “O(1) access time” mean?

Question

I have seen this term \"O(1) access time\" used to mean \"quickly\" but I don\'t understand what it means. The other term that I see with it in the same context is \"O(n) ac

Answer 1

It's called the Big O notation, and describes the search time for various algorithms.

O(1) means that the worst case run time is constant. For most situation it means that you dont acctually need to search the collection, you cand find what you are searching for right away.