Binder

Binary search on steroids for Game Maker Studio 2.3

Binder is a binary search library for those who need quick, efficient lookups on large datasets in games where lookup performance matters, and linear searches or simple hashmaps just won’t cut it.

Features

• Indexing – Generate multiple ordered indexes of your data without duplicating or modifying it.
• Multiple results – Quickly retrieve all matching values from a single search, not just individual hits.
• Mergeable results – Easily combine the results of multiple lookups using union and intersection.
• Automatic sorting – Binder handles sorting internally so you can focus on searching, not maintaining order.
• Performant – Binary search scales with your data, providing fast lookups on any size.
• Non-intrusive – Doesn't alter your original dataset.

Who is this for?

Binder is ideal for:

• Dealing with large datasets that need to be searched through quickly.
• Performing many repeated searches over the same, static, dataset.
• Searching through the same data in multiple ways.

It may not be for you if:

• Your data is dynamic / changes frequently.
• You need to perform lookups based on a single criteria (consider a struct in this case).
• Your lookup relies on a condition that can not be solved by a binary search, like full text search.

If you are just looking for a general purpose binary search script, here you can find a generalized version of the one used in this library.

How to use

See the Wiki for installation, usage examples, and API details.