bisect_left finds the first position p at which an element could be inserted in a given sorted range while maintaining the sorted order. That will be the position of x if x exists in the range. If p is the past-the-end position, x wasn't found. Otherwise, we can test to see if x is there to see if x was found.

from bisect import bisect_left

def binary_search(a, x, lo=0, hi=None):
    if hi is None: hi = len(a)
    pos = bisect_left(a, x, lo, hi)                  # find insertion position
    return pos if pos != hi and a[pos] == x else -1  # don't walk off the end

Why not look at the code for bisect_left/right and adapt it to suit your purpose.

like this:

def binary_search(a, x, lo=0, hi=None):
    if hi is None:
        hi = len(a)
    while lo < hi:
        mid = (lo+hi)//2
        midval = a[mid]
        if midval < x:
            lo = mid+1
        elif midval > x: 
            hi = mid
        else:
            return mid
    return -1

This is a little off-topic (since Moe's answer seems complete to the OP's question), but it might be worth looking at the complexity for your whole procedure from end to end. If you're storing thing in a sorted lists (which is where a binary search would help), and then just checking for existence, you're incurring (worst-case, unless specified):

Sorted Lists

• O( n log n) to initially create the list (if it's unsorted data. O(n), if it's sorted )
• O( log n) lookups (this is the binary search part)
• O( n ) insert / delete (might be O(1) or O(log n) average case, depending on your pattern)

Whereas with a set(), you're incurring

• O(n) to create
• O(1) lookup
• O(1) insert / delete

The thing a sorted list really gets you are "next", "previous", and "ranges" (including inserting or deleting ranges), which are O(1) or O(|range|), given a starting index. If you aren't using those sorts of operations often, then storing as sets, and sorting for display might be a better deal overall. set() incurs very little additional overhead in python.

Simplest is to use bisect and check one position back to see if the item is there:

def binary_search(a,x,lo=0,hi=-1):
    i = bisect(a,x,lo,hi)
    if i == 0:
        return -1
    elif a[i-1] == x:
        return i-1
    else:
        return -1

If you just want to see if it's present, try turning the list into a dict:

# Generate a list
l = [n*n for n in range(1000)]

# Convert to dict - doesn't matter what you map values to
d = dict((x, 1) for x in l)

count = 0
for n in range(1000000):
    # Compare with "if n in l"
    if n in d:
        count += 1

On my machine, "if n in l" took 37 seconds, while "if n in d" took 0.4 seconds.

While there's no explicit binary search algorithm in Python, there is a module - bisect - designed to find the insertion point for an element in a sorted list using a binary search. This can be "tricked" into performing a binary search. The biggest advantage of this is the same advantage most library code has - it's high-performing, well-tested and just works (binary searches in particular can be quite difficult to implement successfully - particularly if edge cases aren't carefully considered).

Basic Types

For basic types like Strings or ints it's pretty easy - all you need is the bisect module and a sorted list:

>>> import bisect
>>> names = ['bender', 'fry', 'leela', 'nibbler', 'zoidberg']
>>> bisect.bisect_left(names, 'fry')
1
>>> keyword = 'fry'
>>> x = bisect.bisect_left(names, keyword)
>>> names[x] == keyword
True
>>> keyword = 'arnie'
>>> x = bisect.bisect_left(names, keyword)
>>> names[x] == keyword
False

You can also use this to find duplicates:

...
>>> names = ['bender', 'fry', 'fry', 'fry', 'leela', 'nibbler', 'zoidberg']
>>> keyword = 'fry'
>>> leftIndex = bisect.bisect_left(names, keyword)
>>> rightIndex = bisect.bisect_right(names, keyword)
>>> names[leftIndex:rightIndex]
['fry', 'fry', 'fry']

Obviously you could just return the index rather than the value at that index if desired.

Objects

For custom types or objects, things are a little bit trickier: you have to make sure to implement rich comparison methods to get bisect to compare correctly.

>>> import bisect
>>> class Tag(object):  # a simple wrapper around strings
...     def __init__(self, tag):
...         self.tag = tag
...     def __lt__(self, other):
...         return self.tag < other.tag
...     def __gt__(self, other):
...         return self.tag > other.tag
...
>>> tags = [Tag('bender'), Tag('fry'), Tag('leela'), Tag('nibbler'), Tag('zoidbe
rg')]
>>> key = Tag('fry')
>>> leftIndex = bisect.bisect_left(tags, key)
>>> rightIndex = bisect.bisect_right(tags, key)
>>> print([tag.tag for tag in tags[leftIndex:rightIndex]])
['fry']

This should work in at least Python 2.7 -> 3.3

Using a dict wouldn't like double your memory usage unless the objects you're storing are really tiny, since the values are only pointers to the actual objects:

>>> a = 'foo'
>>> b = [a]
>>> c = [a]
>>> b[0] is c[0]
True

In that example, 'foo' is only stored once. Does that make a difference for you? And exactly how many items are we talking about anyway?

I thought of using bisect_left and then checking if the item at that position is equal to what I'm searching, but that seems cumbersome (and I also need to do bounds checking if the number can be larger than the largest number in my list). If there is a nicer method I'd like to know about it.

One way to avoid bounds checks or the checking the item for equality is to run both bisect_left() and bisect_right():

def find(data, target):
    start = bisect_left(data, target)
    end = bisect_right(data, target)
    return -1 if start == end else start

Hello here is my python implementation without bisect. let me know if it can be improved.

def bisectLeft(a, t):
    lo = 0
    hi = len(a) - 1
    ans = None
    # print("------lower------")
    # print(a, t)
    while lo <= hi:
        mid = (lo + hi) // 2
        # print(a[lo:mid], [a[mid]], a[mid:hi])
        if a[mid] < t:
            lo = mid + 1
        elif a[mid] > t:
            hi = mid - 1
        elif a[mid] == t:
            if mid == 0: return 0
            if a[mid-1] != t: return mid
            hi = mid - 1
            
    return ans

def bisectRight(a, t):
    lo = 0
    hi = len(a) - 1
    ans = None
    # print("------upper------")
    # print(a, t)
    while lo <= hi:
        mid = (lo + hi) // 2
        # print(a[lo:mid], [a[mid]], a[mid:hi])
        if a[mid] == t:
            ans = mid
        if a[mid] <= t:
            lo = mid + 1
        else:
            hi = mid - 1
    return ans