From f985d33eb61cd1eb01dc72cd361e5548d2c1cf75 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Aditya Bhargava <bluemangroupie@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2016 14:03:34 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] first commit: code for chapter 1

---
 .../python/01_binary_search.py                | 28 +++++++++++++++++++
 README.md                                     |  8 ++++++
 2 files changed, 36 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 01_introduction_to_algorithms/python/01_binary_search.py
 create mode 100644 README.md

diff --git a/01_introduction_to_algorithms/python/01_binary_search.py b/01_introduction_to_algorithms/python/01_binary_search.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d053232
--- /dev/null
+++ b/01_introduction_to_algorithms/python/01_binary_search.py
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+def binary_search(list, item):
+  # low and high keep track of which part of the list you'll search in.
+  low = 0
+  high = len(list) - 1
+
+  # While you haven't narrowed it down to one element ...
+  while low <= high:
+    # ... check the middle element
+    mid = (low + high) // 2
+    guess = list[mid]
+    # Found the item.
+    if guess == item:
+      return mid
+    # The guess was too high.
+    if guess > item:
+      high = mid - 1
+    # The guess was too low.
+    else:
+      low = mid + 1
+
+  # Item doesn't exist
+  return None
+
+my_list = [1, 3, 5, 7, 9]
+print binary_search(my_list, 3) # => 1
+
+# 'None' means nil in Python. We use to indicate that the item wasn't found.
+print binary_search(my_list, -1) # => None
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e15dbf8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+# Grokking Algorithms
+
+This is the code in my book [Grokking Algorithms](https://www.manning.com/bhargava).
+
+# Contributing
+
+- The examples in this book are in Python, but I'd like to get examples in Ruby, Javascript, C, and other languages too. Please add examples in other languages!
+- I'm pretty responsive to PRs. That is the quickest way to contribute to this repo.