BINARY SEARCH WITH A PARALLEL RECOVERY OF THE BITS.

In this paper we consider the problem of assigning a numerical value of each of N elements which are arranged in a linear array, for the purpose of being able to recover the location of any specified element (with respect to the first element), with this aim being achieved using a small number of possible different assigned values. An obvious solution is using a binary search approach, characterized by the features: (a) At least left bracket log//2 N right bracket plus 2 different values are needed for implementing the process. (b) the bits forming the binary representation of the specified location are recovered sequentially (starting with the least significant bit). A new approach in assigning values to elements, for the purpose of recovering efficiently their location, is presented in this paper, for the case where N is of the form 2**n minus 1.