Binary search algorithm in python

Question

I am trying to implement the binary search in python and have written it as follows. However, I can\'t make it stop whenever needle_element is larger than the largest elemen

Answer 1

def binary_search(array, target):
    low = 0
    mid = len(array) / 2
    upper = len(array)

    if len(array) == 1:
        if array[0] == target:
            print target
            return array[0]
        else:
            return False
    if target == array[mid]:
        print array[mid]
        return mid
    else:
        if mid > low:
            arrayl = array[0:mid]
            binary_search(arrayl, target)

        if upper > mid:
            arrayu = array[mid:len(array)]
            binary_search(arrayu, target)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    a = [3,2,9,8,4,1,9,6,5,9,7]
    binary_search(a,9)