binary search middle value calculation

Question

The following is the pseudocode I got from a TopCoder tutorial about binary search

binary_search(A, target):
   lo = 1, hi = size(A)
   while lo <= hi:
               


        

Answer 1

Although this question is 5 years old, but there is a great article in googleblog which explains the problem and the solution in detail which is worth to share.

It's needed to mention that in current implementation of binary search in Java mid = lo + (hi - lo) / 2 calculation is not used, instead the faster and more clear alternative is used with zero fill right shift operator

int mid = (low + high) >>> 1;