Final answer:
A linear search is a technique used to search for an element in an array by checking each element sequentially until the desired element is found or the end of the array is reached. so, option d is the correct answer.
Step-by-step explanation:
A linear search, also known as a sequential search, is used in order to search all elements in an array until the correct element is found. It is a simple method that works by starting at the beginning of the array and comparing each element in turn with the value being searched for until the desired element is found or the end of the array is reached.
This method is not the most efficient in terms of performance, especially for large datasets, as it may require examining every element in the worst case. However, it is straightforward to implement and does not require the array to be sorted beforehand, unlike other search algorithms such as binary search.
A linear search is used in order to search all elements in an array until the correct element is found. It starts from the beginning of the array and checks each element one by one until a match is found or the end of the array is reached. This algorithm has a time complexity of O(n), where n is the number of elements in the array. For example, if you have an array of numbers [4, 2, 9, 1, 6] and you want to find the element 9, a linear search will start from the first element and compare each element to the target until it finds a match.