Best way to search for an element in integer array

I have an integer array. Elements in this array are not in any particular order. What is the best and most efficient way to find an element in this array.

Thanks in Advance.

If you are only going to have to do it once? Start at the beginning and go the array until you find the element, or don't find it.

If you are going to have to do it many, many times? Sort the array and use a binary search.

I need to search only once. But, i was just thinking if there can be any better approach than using linear search.May be if we can use some data structure to optimise the performance.

You could get it from its index "intArray[3]". But if your code do not have a way to know the index, I believe you will have to do a linear search.

"Better" in terms of...what? Speed? Memory use? Code complexity?

My point is that unless and until you define what's important, then any discussion is meaningless.

Raj Kumar Bindal wrote:I need to search only once. But, i was just thinking if there can be any better approach than using linear search.May be if we can use some data structure to optimise the performance.

Absolutely, you could use some data structure. But that wasn't what you said. You said "I have an integer array. Elements in this array are not in any particular order." It's certainly true that if you had used some other data structure -- even an integer array with the elements sorted -- you could do the search faster.

Of course it might take you longer to produce that other data structure than it would take to produce the plain old unsorted integer array. You might spend more additional time or memory or whatever you meant by "performance" than you would save in searching that other data structure.

But these are just generalities. All one can really say without any particular requirements is "It depends".